


Kolkata Heat

by Kaerith



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Bottom Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Dirty Talk, Fuck Or Die, M/M, Rescue Missions, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:21:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26001067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaerith/pseuds/Kaerith
Summary: Nick was unarmed but the stranger wasn’t. He brandished a knife. Nick couldn’t stop himself from cussing as the door closed and locked behind the unfamiliar man. “The door!””Who are you?” The guy was tall, decently muscled. He held his tanto knife in a sure grip.”Who the hell are you?!” Nick shot back. “If you don’t know who I am, why are you even here?”The stranger’s face morphed into one of shock as he blurted out, “You’re an omega!”Nick sprung into action to take advantage of the man’s surprise. “And you just locked yourself in my goddamn safe room!”
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 200
Kudos: 1064





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I limited the use of Italian, but I did try to get two different sources to check that phrases make sense. If things are wrong enough that someone more knowledgeable can correct me, you would be welcome to comment.
> 
> Nicky is mostly called "Nick" because without having a team why would he have a diminutive nickname?

It was bullshit that for all the times that Nick had died and survived he was still chained to his antiquated biology. 

There aren’t any male omegas here in the 21st century. Except for him. 

It isn’t quite like any other death. It’s like dying of fever, the body hot and cooking his brain; it’s also dehydration and the arid gasping for liquid; but it’s also a grasping, sharp need in his belly that claws up into his chest and bursts his heart. 

There used to be prostitutes. Alpha males who would shove an omega down and knot him until the heat receded. But by this age the vast majority of humans were “betas” a third classification that lacked omegas’ heats and alphas’ knots, and nothing satisfied a heat like a knot. So Nick didn’t even bother trying to hire anyone anymore. 

Besides, he was unkillable and healed almost instantly. It was too dangerous a secret to trust to some random man with an alpha superiority complex. And Nick had learned how to keep his head down, even in the age of surveillance cameras, facial-recognition technology, and online banking. 

He was known by various names as he had done some dirty deeds to some very bad people over the centuries. Only a handful of Reddit kooks attributed different jobs he had done to the same person, but otherwise he was known by many shadowy epithets like “The St. Petersburg Phantom” and “The Maltese Sniper.” Nick had also done some notable jobs with a female persona in the UAE. He always changed equipment and weapons and infil schemes to prevent a pattern. 

Nick had just done a mission in Myanmar against some of the military’s groups doing “clearance operations” and burning Rohingya villages. Someone had been sniffing on his trail: he had come across two systems that had already been hacked when he was covering his tracks, and a hard drive had been removed before he had even gotten to that location. 

He didn’t have much time to shake these unknown hunters off with his annual heat looming four days away. Since he didn’t know who had made him, why, or how, he had to clumsily drop some hints among anonymous dark web forums and made a couple large cash transfers between some of his own aliases regarding fictional jobs in South America and Cambodia. Nick’s real destination was to a safe house in Kolkata and he had traveled as incognito as a white man could... which meant that he alternated between being a penniless backpacking German adventurer and a middle-class Australian sex tourist. The life of a lone mercenary was much more glamorous in fiction.

* * *

Quynh had found the evidence of an unknown actor meddling in Myanmar. Booker had done the techy stuff Joe didn’t understand and had dispatched Andy to Honduras and Joe to India. After Quynh had lost the agent, Booker sent Joe to case a small company that received international shipments and forwarded them on to their legitimate (and not so legitimate) clients. 

When he took a peek into their databases he found only a few addressees that Joe couldn’t rule out as their mystery man. He didn’t care about those who did regular business because he doubted their prey tended to stay in one place for long. He also didn’t bother with the clients who made various small purchases. His number one suspect was “Casa di Cazzo Grosso” which was, ostensibly, a sex shop. But why would an online or a brick-and-mortar sex toy business make periodic purchases from packaged food or hunting supply wholesalers? 

The address of “Casa di Cazzo Grosso” was a heritage house divided into several apartments. The old building had narrow doors to the street but no numbers. The custom was to ask the neighbors about whom he was searching for to be shown where he lived, but that method was obviously not an option. 

Joe had to do surveillance. There was a tea stall across the street and Joe ordered chai and perched on a spindly stool he wasn’t quite sure would take his weight. 

The man arrived at night after Joe had been lurking on a rooftop watching for hours. A hood covered his head but his pale hand was exposed to the neighbors’ lights as he unlocked a door. There were no windows to the street so Joe didn’t bother waiting any longer to climb down to the street and get to work on the lock. 

* * *

Nick didn’t intend to dally long once he finally made it in the house. The teenager from around the corner had brought in the supplies he had needed, so Nick moved the boxes into the safe room. He was cutting it close and could feel the first symptoms of his oncoming heat. 

Before settling into his specially prepped room, Nick opened the hidden safe under the front room’s floorboards and divested himself of all his knives before he closed it and pulled the wood and carpet back into place. 

The safe room was actually a small bedroom and tiny bathroom with bricked-in windows and reinforced walls and a security door across the hallway barring them from the front rooms of the house. The sturdy door had a special timed lock. Once he set it it couldn’t be opened for 72 hours. Nick’s heat would be over by then. Until the 72 hours were up, that door wouldn’t open for anything. No one could come in to rape or kill Nick while he was incapacitated, and Nick wouldn’t be able to let himself out in the haze of desperate arousal. 

He was on his last legs, exhausted and short-tempered as moisture started to slick up his asshole when he set the timed lock and staggered into the safe room. He was just cognizant enough to realize that the usual electric beep didn’t sound after he turned away to let the door close behind him. He swiveled his head and his adrenaline kicked up when he saw an unexpected figure in his peripheral vision. 

Nick was unarmed but the stranger wasn’t. He brandished a knife. Nick couldn’t stop himself from cussing as the door closed and locked behind the unfamiliar man. “The door- Fuck!” 

”Who are you?” The guy was tall, decently muscled. He held his tanto knife in a sure grip. 

”Who the hell are you?!” Nick shot back. “If you don’t know who I am, why are you even here?” 

The stranger’s face morphed into one of shock as he blurted out an unfamiliar word. Nick stayed in his defensive position, eying up the unexpected and unwelcome visitor. “You’re an omega!” 

Nick sprung into action to take advantage of the man’s surprise. “And you just fucking locked yourself in my goddamn safe room, you cunt!” The intruder didn’t even fight back as Nick stole his knife and kicked him to the floor in one move and then spun around to regain his balance before he dropped a knee on the guy’s chest and stabbed him between the ribs. The man still looked surprised as he died. 

”Fuck!” Nick said, standing up and giving the corpse a kick. “What kind of jerk waltzes into a stranger’s safe room, asks him who he is, then just lets himself get killed where his body is going to just be here for my damn heat?!” 

* * *

Joe woke up huddled in a corner with some sort of cloth tossed over him. He could hear the man showering in another room. He sat up and took the first good look at where he was. 

They had fought in a short hallway by the heavy security door. Joe had followed the guy in because he had been curious about what this man was hiding. 

This was just a windowless bedroom. There was a bed, unopened boxes against one wall, and a small bureau. When Joe quietly got up and peeked at the drawers’ contents there were just some comfortable clothes and sex toys. 

Getting a quick glimpse at the hallway and the one other closed door that led to the bathroom, Joe took the liberty of chucking his slashed and bloodied shirt into the corner his body had been dumped and borrowed one of the omega’s. He was still bloody, but sitting there like a gruesome apparition was more likely to scare the guy. 

The water stopped and a minute later the man unlocked the bathroom door and cautiously peered into the bedroom. 

”Jesus fucking Christ!” He said, shocked and pissed off. He raised the knife he had taken from Joe. 

Even through the fuzziness that was suffusing Joe’s head and body because of the omega’s scent, Joe noticed the knife. “Were you expecting this?” He asked, lifting his hands to indicate his renewed aliveness. Had he gasped back to life in the man’s presence and just didn’t remember? 

”I know there are some who cannot die,” the man said warily. 

For a moment Joe wondered. Omegas and alphas were rare, their secondary characteristics had evolved out of the population very quickly. He was an alpha male, and both Andy and Quynh were alpha females, but the glands that differentiated humans into alphas and omegas had atrophied into nearly homogeneous lymph nodes across the species by the 1700s. This man was a strong, primordial omega type- could he be an immortal like them? Joe couldn’t remember ever dreaming about him, though. 

The man, with only a towel and the knife, watched Joe process all of this vigilantly. 

”You said that the door cannot be opened?” 

”For three days. I like to handle my heats alone.” 

It had been several centuries since Joe has encountered a true omega, but he was pretty sure that by the amount of pheromones and slick he could smell from the man that the guy should be incoherent with arousal by now. He was glad that he wasn’t, but he was aware of their time ticking down. 

”My name is Joe. My team and I came across your work in Myanmar. We were curious but only intended to find out what you do and who you work for.” 

”I’m independent. I only try to do good.” The man didn’t relax or offer any other information. 

Joe figured the guy would have to break the silence first. His body was a time bomb, but he held himself together very well, experienced at keeping his cool under pressure. The knife was steady and he held the tuck of the towel wrapped around him keeping his hand loose and ready to move. His brown hair was dark and dripped in pointed clumps over his forehead above two pale and intense eyes. Joe couldn’t see any of the scars he would expect on a combat veteran of his caliber. 

”Can you give me a name?” Joe finally buckled. “Or do you want me to keep calling you _Cazzo Grosso_ in my head?” 

The corner of the man’s mouth twitched. “I have to make a note to revise my supply chain. Go ahead and call me Dick if it’ll make you happy.” 

Joe decided he liked this man. He was careful, composed, and smart. It wouldn’t be too risky to try a bit of flirting. “Oh, false advertising? You aren’t actually known as Thick Dick?” 

”Men have rarely been concerned about the size of an omega’s cock.” 

”I have been around for a while. I grew out of that sexist shit centuries ago. I’m alpha enough to admit that I enjoy bending over for a _cazzo. Sia grande che piccolo,_ ” Joe added archly. 

The man scowled and tossed off a muttered insult in Italian. “I would rather keep killing you than fuck you. I don’t know who you are.” 

”You never dreamed of me? Never saw my face?” 

Green-blue eyes narrowed. “Flirting will not make me forget you are a threat,” he said, but Joe caught a slight hesitation. 

”How old are you?” Joe laid his hypothesis out there. “Are you another like me?” There was the minutest flinch that gave him away, and Joe had to rein in his excitement. “There are others. My team. A woman, short dark hair. Another woman, Vietnamese. A blond Frenchman. Have you seen them?” 

The man hesitated. “Maybe? There were dreams, once. A long time ago.” 

”You must have met them! That is the only way to stop the dreams!” 

”I never dreamt of you,” the man says. “Does that mean you came after me?” 

”I doubt it. I was born so long ago that the name of my people has faded.” 

”Then you have lied to me about your name,” the man said. 

Joe smiled in appreciation of his intelligence. “It is more of a convenient nickname. I was born Yusuf al-Kaysani in The Maghreb.” There was a flicker of recognition that made Joe’s heart squeeze. How long had this man been alive and alone? 

He was about to try for an answer again when the man’s expression hardened. “Pull out the box from under the bed,” he ordered. Joe didn’t know where this was going, but the man held the knife up in a more aggressive stance. 

The box was a long, flat plastic tub. When Joe removed the lid he saw it was filled with various restraints, gags, and other sex toys. 

”Cuff your hands behind your back.” 

Joe could smell a gush of omega scent and could practically taste the salty-sweetness of the fluid that the man’s body was producing to ready itself for sex. It made him feel more sympathetic than silly to find a set of green faux-fur covered handcuffs and hold them up for the man’s inspection. 

”Put them on.” The man was getting visibly anxious. 

”I need to piss. Can I cuff them in the front?” Joe asked. 

He was suspicious, but time for talking had obviously run out. “Fine. Now.” 

Joe obeyed, not particularly bothered. He had gotten out of sturdier shackles than these. 

”In the bathroom. If you truly are a decent man like you are trying to make me believe, then you will stay out of the bedroom while I take care of myself.” 

The emotional reality of the situation suddenly hit Joe. He wished he hadn’t just walked in without understanding the man’s situation. This guy had a yearly period of utter helplessness- no, worse than helplessness: his own biological instincts would actively work against his own safety. Thus the lock that would only open after a certain time. And he didn’t seem to have anyone he could trust to help keep him safe. 

”On my honor,” Joe said, meeting his eyes, “I swear that I will not rape you nor inflict any harm.” 

The man nodded but his eyes were still wary. Joe held up his cuffed hands and pointed to the bedroom door. The man moved from his path, still watching him vigilantly as Joe went into the bathroom and closed the door. 

Joe saw his phone on the tank of the toilet, turned off. The man must have taken it along with his knife after killing him. He must also be in quite a state if he didn’t realize that he had left it here with Joe. He left it where it was. It was a cheap and old model. Turning it on would be noisy and only deepen the man’s mistrust. Joe’s team knew where he was. They would come if too much time passed without word from him. 

That made him feel even more sympathy for this lonely man. If Joe had been an omega with a heat he would have been safe with his family’s protection. 

* * *

As his mind succumbed to the ravages of his biology Nick couldn’t keep his thoughts from turning back to the immortal in the other room. His wonder at the fact that this man could maybe be as old as him kept being overpowered by his libido as Joe’s voice repeated in his head: _I enjoy bending over._ There was a male alpha just in the other room who might not be the usual domineering and inconsiderate type that had put Nick off getting his heat fucked out by alphas for hire centuries ago. 

There were sex toys in a drawer. Nick swapped the knife in his hand for a dildo, tossed the towel aside, and then eased it into his dripping hole. Using the small attached pump he inflated the bulb at the end that did its best to simulate the type of knot alphas used to have. Nowadays knotting toys were a specialty item catering to a kink for old-fashioned alpha/omega role play. With real alphas dying out generations ago, none of the modern facsimiles were ever quite genuine enough. Of course, once could say that about any synthetic phallus. 

But Nick had had a preternaturally long life. He could remember the satisfaction of the dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins flooding his body and cooling his raging hormones when he was knotted by an alpha. _Any_ alpha, not even just those that he had held genuine affection for. Of course being fucked by the male alphas he had loved had been even more fulfilling. Silicone or rubber didn’t hold a candle to the pleasure Nick remembered from those heats. But Nick had parted from his last alpha lover sometime well before the Industrial Revolution. 

Anyway, the sex toys were only a stopgap measure. Being filled would stop the ache of his muscles as they tried to clamp down on a cock but wouldn’t do a damn thing against the missing suffusion of pheromones. Omegas excreted certain semiochemical compounds while alphas gave off others. The reciprocity of these chemicals soothed the “heats” and “ruts” experienced by omegas and alphas. 

It was like living long enough that everyone around you had evolved past the need for water. You needed the water to live, but no one had any to give to you. In a few hours Nick would die, like many omegas had throughout human history. Unlike them, he would resurrect to dehydrate to death at least one more time before his heat was over. 

He gagged himself to keep from begging the alpha to come in and fuck him. He cuffed one wrist to the sturdy cast-iron bed frame to prevent him from staggering to the other room. He also turned on the small electric radio to cover the sounds he would inevitably make as he suffered and died. 

* * *

Joe had honestly thought the omega had a plan. He must have figured out a way to prevent heat deprivation death. The guy had a whole well thought out routine to handle his heats alone in a secure location. The first three hours passed with no alarming noises interrupting the Hindi-pop and occasional cricket score updates he could hear coming from the bedroom. Joe let himself doze off to catch up on sleep he had missed with his break-in the previous night and his stake-out that day. 

When he woke up he turned on the phone and texted his team, telling them he had found and was keeping tabs on the target but omitting the small details of being handcuffed and locked in with their mystery operative. But when Joe’s stomach began to growl, he called out a question about food. Then he tried the doorknob which moved freely while the door itself did not. His reluctant host never said a word, which worried Joe enough that he eventually forced the barrier open and glared at the cheap rubber sandal that had been wedged under it. 

The scene on the bed made a complex knot of emotions clog Joe’s throat. “No, no, no, no, no,” Joe muttered as he rushed to the bedside to examine the omega’s condition. Still alive- barely- and unconscious. The fucking suicidal idiot had secured himself to the damn bed and had silenced himself. 

He had to brace the chain of his own handcuffs under a foot and dislocate his right thumb to pull his hand free. He lost a lot of skin in the process but it restored itself quickly enough. Joe kept up a murmur of insults and reassurances as he pulled the makeshift gag from the man’s mouth, ripped off his own borrowed shirt, grabbed one of the bottled waters, and wedged himself half-behind the man to prop him up. “Drink, you idiot!” He did, eyelids fluttering the smallest bit, but it wasn’t enough to bring the stubborn dickhead back to awareness. 

The glands on the omega’s neck were swollen, the skin ruddy with the strain of releasing more and more pheromones in an effort to attract the reciprocal chemicals from an alpha. It felt taboo to do, a violation of the man’s clear desire to keep Joe away from him, but the heat emanating from the omega’s body was alarming, so Joe began to lick the tender spot on the left side of his neck. 

Of course that was when the man began to regain awareness. He was too weak to struggle, though. _”Che stai facendo?”_

”Shh, shh. I’m just trying to help. Skin-to-skin contact, my smell, my saliva... they are helping, yes?” Politely, Joe stopped licking his neck, though his torso was still wedged between the other man’s head and shoulders and the bars of the iron headboard. He kept running his fingers through the omega’s hair slowly. The man was pushing into the contact, probably without realizing it. 

”Just... don’t....” The omega protested weakly. 

”I already promised, remember? Relax, my friend.” 

The man did relax, reluctantly, though his body wasn’t giving him a choice. “ _Sono Nicolò._ Nicolò di Genova.” He switched back to English. “You can call me Nick.” 

The alpha smelled good. Sweat and chai and things that Nick couldn’t consciously identify but which lit up his brain like a fucking fun fair. He could feel Joe’s erection against his hip, but the man wasn’t actually doing anything with it which made Nick’s hole clench around the disappointing substitution. 

”Drink more,” Joe instructed, still holding the bottle of water to his mouth. “Are you hungry?” 

Nick sipped then closed his eyes and shook his head. 

”How long have you been doing this? Why?” 

”God stopped making alphas and omegas. Their primitive lusts made them unworthy of His divine love,” Nick repeated one of Catholicism’s trite rebuttals to the reasonable hypotheses of science and evolution in a dry tone. 

”It used to be the opposite opinion when I was born,” Joe said. “Jerusalem desires to be liberated, and does not cease to implore you to come to her aid. From you, those blessed with the ferocity of the divine passions, she especially asks succor, because God has conferred upon you above all great glory in arms,” he paraphrased. 

Even through his muzzy-headedness Nick recalled that speech. He wouldn’t ever forget; the words of Pope Urban II had incited a devout and ignorant Nicolò to leave his home and die at the blade of one of those “heathens.” He just hadn’t stayed dead. “Propaganda,” he said to Joe, with age-worn disappointment at his younger self. “I achieved only my great and glorious death for those lies.” 

”You were there?” Joe’s hold tightened. 

”Died well outside the gates. The first time. Shot by arrows from the Moor cavalry, but finished off by a blade in the stomach,” Nick said tonelessly, isolated from the horror and trauma by centuries. 

”You are as old as I,” Joe said, sounding amazed. “I had been a Berber merchant. I rode out from Marākiš to join the infantry. _My_ first death was at the sword of a Christian invader.” There was a pause. “So you are one of us. Undying.” 

Nick chuckled humorlessly. “Undying? I have died many times. I never knew there were others like me.” 

Joe buried his face in Nick’s hair. “We usually find one another through dreams. I never dreamt of you, though Andromache and Quynh had many glimpses of a crusader.” 

”I may remember them,” Nick confessed. “And the blond Frenchman. From the early 1800s?” 

”He goes by Booker these days. You will meet them in a few days.” 

This made Nick tense and try to pull away. “The phone,” he recalled. “ _Fuck._ Of course you contacted them.” 

Joe didn’t let him go. “ _Akhi._ My brother. We are relieved to have found you! You have been alone for so long. My heart breaks when I imagine it.” 

Nick was frightened by this looming upheaval to his lonely life even as his emotions ached at the temptation of a family of those like him, misplaced in time and only getting more and more lost. “How do I know I can trust you?” 

Joe’s hands, scent, and voice soothed him. “Oh, Nicolò. Nicky. Have I hurt you? No, I have let you kill me and handcuffed myself at your request and stayed away until your agony was too much for me to ignore.” 

Nick turned his face into Joe’s bare chest. He liked the way the hair tickled his nose. He was weak, wanting this. But he was so, so tired of the loneliness. He didn’t like being this solitary half-person, having nothing to live for or look forward to except the next mission where he hoped he would be able to give freedom or justice to those who needed it. ”Alpha,” he said, quietly, breaking apart. Taking the chance that Joe was going to keep him together. 

”Nicky,” Joe said, pressing his lips to the man’s forehead, and Nick liked that name, liked that small but meaningful addition of a vowel that somehow turned his modern sobriquet into a title that declared his importance to another person. “Your temperature is going up again. The last thing I can do to help is to knot you. I won’t if you tell me not to, but I would hate to watch you die in my arms.” 

Honestly? Nick considered for a moment how dying in Joe’s arms wouldn’t be a bad way to go. He had died many times, violently and alone. But his body, below his heart and even further away from his brain, was enthusiastic about the possibility of getting taken care of properly by a real alpha, another relic of the past like him. His cock was hard again, eager to enjoy actual pleasure instead of the agony of unfulfillment. Nick moved a clumsy hand down between his legs but Joe caught it and raised it up to give his knuckles a kiss. 

”You say yes? I will take care of it.” 

_”Yes,”_ Nick gasped out, his knees already trembling at just the promise of relief. “Joe, yes. Fuck! Fuck me.” 

Joe shifted, and Nick was able to see his face closely and clearly as the man helped him slide down onto his back. His eyes were such a deep, warm brown and crinkled endearingly at the corners with such kindness. His mouth, however, was a temptation into wickedness- his lips pink and the ends turned up in a promise of exhausting and thorough carnal pleasures. 

Joe kissed him and Nicky craned his face into his to fully luxuriate in his lips, beard, and breath; all soft and welcoming and covertly dangerous. A small corner of Nick’s mind warned him that this man was still unknown and probably treacherous, but it was too much of what Nick had been craving for so, so long for him to be able to resist. 

Joe’s hand stroking down from his left shoulder to his hipbone made Nicky gasp and writhe. “Your body is a delight.” 

”I am going to be homicidal if this is just a ploy, Yusuf Al-Kaysani.” Nick regrouped his wits to make the threatening promise even as his heart felt like it was trying to leap from his chest. 

A hand circled firmly around Nick’s dick, the thumb smoothing over the slick and sensitive head of it. Nick had to bite off a curse word as his hips reflexively thrust into the sensation. 

”You have enraptured me with your physicality,” Joe said between licks and gentle nibbles at Nicky’s neck. “I would gladly die at the end of your sword with the knowledge that I could return to life and be impaled again.” Nick laughed. Joe lifted his face to give a wink and shameless smile before he looked down to figure out how to remove the fake phallus from Nick’s ass. It was an awkward moment that felt blessedly real for its imperfections. 

The gush of fluid that released as the synthetic bulb deflated brought color and heat to Nick’s cheeks. Joe kept his gaze on his task as he pulled out the toy and set it aside. “Shh, shh,” Joe said, as if Nick’s embarrassment was an audible thing. “It has been centuries since I made love to an omega, but I cannot recall any smelling so sweet as this.” 

The first brush of Joe’s finger against the wet rim of Nicky’s hole made him keen. “Come on, knot me, fucking... fuck me, alpha, please. I need it.” His delirious whine was a mix of tongues but his body language communicated his demand without confusion. Joe pulled away to sit on his knees and began to work at the fastenings of his trousers, still stained with his own blood from a handful of hours earlier. 

Nicky’s green-blue eyes took in the sight of his dick thrusting proudly from his thick patch of hair. Joe’s balls were also wreathed in a thinner coating of curly hair. The sight was primal and electrifying and inspired a high-pitched sound of pure need from Nicky’s throat. His hands grabbed at Joe’s lovely brown shoulders and he pulled the alpha up to cover him. 

Joe hooked one of Nicky’s thighs over one shoulder and guided his cock into the omega’s dripping hole and groaned as he sunk in to the hilt. When he could open his eyes again he studied Nicolò’s face in its unguarded bliss. The Genovan was a picture of masculine beauty from his aquiline nose and strong jaw to his defined muscles that had made omegas more coveted for their agility and strength than as bedwarmers like some ancient alphas had tried to demean them. There were many reasons why true omegas and alphas had been encouraged to be soldiers: despite their complementary sex biology, both types of humans were leaner and prone to the passions of rage as well as lust. Men of political power who were neither alpha nor omega tended to use them as pawns out of their own perceived inferiority. 

In many ways humanity had improved with its anatomical homogenization. But there was nothing, Joe suspected, as satisfying as sex between the two types. 

Nicky’s body was hot and wet, and he clenched tightly as Joe’s knot swelled and made Nick roll his eyes in pleasure whenever it tugged at the rim. Joe laved Nicky’s neck again before he bent down to nuzzle into Nicky’s armpit and the glands there. The scent was something forgotten yet longed for, and there were notes Joe knew were unique to this man and drove him crazy with thoughts of never letting this one go. 

The way Nicky’s body flexed and writhed in his arms was endearing and Joe felt like an intangible bridge was being forged between their hearts; a weighty ache in his chest reaching out to grasp for something in Nicolò’s. The Genovan’s lips were parted and he seemed to be gasping for as much of Joe’s scent as he could, like he wanted to drown in all the smell and sensation the alpha male could provide; take as much of it in to keep inside. 

Joe’s hands never stopped moving, his eyes following the invisible shapes he traced on Nick’s skin and feeling in awe at the lovely combination of their colors. Nick’s body was strong and lean, freckled with springy dark hairs and endearing little moles, and Joe wanted to have an eternity with him to taste the constellations of these wonderful imperfections. 

The way Nicky’s arm and legs hooked around Joe in encouragement made Joe groan even as he reached out to entwine his fingers with those of the omega’s left hand, pinning it to the headboard so that the man would stop tugging his wrist against the restraint. Nick tossed his head and gasped out fragments of words in several different tongues as he wildly tried to pull the alpha’s cock deeper. When Joe felt himself on the edge, when his dick had inflated to such a size that he feared it would burst and was locked inside of Nicky, Joe finally slipped his free hand down to pull at Nick’s cock with purpose. The omega climaxed with his eyes- pupils blasted wide open- locked upon Joe’s; his mouth moving but breath caught in his throat and unable to put sound to whatever words he was mouthing. 

”Beautiful one. Light of my eyes,” Joe found himself saying in a language that had become more natural than his long-dead native one. When he came he lost even that ability and his lips had to share his ecstasy and adoration silently against his partner’s skin. 

The fever-heat of his body and the desperate edge to Nicky’s scent had all but disappeared once he was securely locked with Joe, and Nick fell into a restful doze. The alpha did all the little tests he knew to ascertain the omega’s condition, touching for fever and dehydration and swelling, and found Nick in an improved state. Joe had the opportunity to study the Genovan’s face in full and his fingers itched for graphite or pencil to commit this moment to something less ephemeral than memory. God willing, when the man’s heat was over Joe could convince him to join their small family. Nicolò’s intelligence would engage Andy, his skill at being unnoticed would impress Quynh, and Booker would be pleased to have another person knowledgeable about technology the way the rest of them weren’t. Joe would want most of this man for himself, to learn and cherish, but would be happy enough to have him as a comrade-in-arms if that was all Nick would permit. But he wanted the chance to see those green-blue eyes darken with lust and hear the omega cry out incoherently from Joe’s attentions every day. 

Nick woke when Joe finally pulled out and squinted at him fuzzily. “What are you doing?” Joe was taking a close look at Nick’s hole. “I’m fine. Even if I wasn’t it would healed by now.” 

”Just wanted to make sure,” Joe said, not mentioning the more base and possessive reason he had felt compelled to scrutinize that part of the man’s anatomy. “Where is the key?” He asked, pointing to Nick’s cuffed wrist. 

Joe freed Nick and poked around the boxes until he found some that contained food. When Nick returned from the other room Joe had a veritable charcuterie laid out of nuts, dried fruits, and cured meats. 

”I could find no other knife,” Joe said, indicating his own that was still lying where Nick had dropped it. Nick didn’t know whether to be warmed or angry that Joe hadn’t reclaimed the weapon to maintain his facade of harmlessness. 

”How were you planning on eating without- oh.” Joe belatedly pieced together the deliberate lack of weapons in these rooms and how the boxes with the food had been cut open but left stacked and not readily accessible. Nick had expected to die continuously until his heat was over, and it made him sad. 

The other man did not want this interloper’s pity. “I have kept myself safe and alive for over 900 years,” Nick said, his gaze sharpening in umbrage. 

”Would that you had not had to do so alone,” Joe said, clenching his hands in uselessness. “She said there was a system- that the dreams were to guide us together! Why would God and the world be so unkind to offer companionship to only a few? How many more of us are there, immortal and alone?” 

Nick found his own annoyance fading away as he watched Joe visibly struggle with his thoughts. “I did dream of others. Two women, the Frenchman, a man with skin darker than yours. They stopped.” He hesitated. “...And those were times when I wasn’t trying to do good. When you are alone for a long time you can forget that everyone else who exists is as real as you are. Makes it easy to use and destroy people.” Nick paused and moved over to pick up some dried dates. “And then, even when you wake up from those dark times, you spend a while more dwelling in the guilt.” He gave Joe a self-deprecating smile. “I am not the most intelligent or self-aware man. Took me a number of centuries to figure out why I should do good when almost everything that punishes evil loses meaning.” He popped the fruit in his mouth then retrieved the knife and knelt on the floor to unpackage and slice some salami. 

Joe pushed bottled water at him. “You need to drink more to counteract the dehydrated and salted foods,” he said almost absent-mindedly, mulling over what Nick had just disclosed. 

”I should have some merguez if you don’t eat pork,” Nick offered. 

Joe waved the offer aside. “Have you lost your belief in God?” 

”Lost it and found it several times over. I do not find myself much concerned about it these days. Tell me about the others.” 

Joe did, until the symptoms of Nick’s heat made themselves known again. The omega sucked the grease off his fingers and stood up. “Take me from behind,” he said, settling himself on the bed on his hands and knees. 

It was an abrupt transition, but Joe found himself more than willing to obey the order. “You don’t require kissing first?” 

”You don’t need to seduce me, alpha,” Nick said, dropping from his hands to his elbows. He could feel Joe climb onto the mattress behind him and then felt his hands touch his ass, his fingers spread wide. 

”Maybe I do,” Joe said. “If you won’t lend me your mouth I can get my kisses somewhere else.” 

”You don’t- People don’t really do that, do they?” 

Joe had moved closer to Nick, hands still in place and massaging while he bent down and brushed his lips and beard over Nicky’s spine. “You just washed. I can smell your slick. Let me try it and I promise if you don’t like it I will stop. But I assure you that I will like it,” he added, his voice dropping down an octave. 

”If you really think...” Nick trailed off uncertainly and then gave his consent, thinking it would be unclean for Joe and unfulfilling for the need he himself felt. 

”You enjoy being fingered, yes?” Joe said, prodding gently at Nicky’s hole with his thumbs. “This will be better.” He spread Nicky’s cheeks and got his nose close to smell the source of the omega’s strongest scent. He hadn’t lied- it did smell sweet, though he knew the taste would be tempered with some saltiness. 

His first kiss was a simple press of his lips, but on his second he used the tip of his tongue. It nudged against the top of his rim and he heard Nick gasp as the man reflexively flexed his hole in search of more stimulation. Joe had to duck his chin down to give his face room for his grin but quickly rallied and went to work on showing that lovely and sensitive portion of flesh the reverence he felt it deserved. 

Yusuf had always been attracted to male omegas the most. Masculine, muscular bodies that could handle everything his own body was capable of giving. A cock to fuck into him and a tight hole that just needed a little coaxing to get it wet and greedy. He liked hearing deep grunts and being pulled into place by thick fingers; resting his head against a bulging bicep and fingering small little buds of nipples. Nicky gave him the low-voiced groans of pleasure and reached back to press Joe’s face even closer against him while he wiggled his feet into the wadded up sheets. His hole released syrupy little spurts of slick that made Joe so turned on that he had to pull away to breathe through a rush of dizziness. He had to grab Nicky’s hand from his head so he could move. 

Nicky was panting for air and squirming his entire lower body, trying to chase after Joe’s lips and tongue as well as grind his dick against his thigh. His hand tugged at Joe’s. “Please, alpha. God, fuck, so good. Need your cock, Joe, please!” 

Joe sunk a finger in to test, pulled it out and then used three next. Nicky’s hole grasped at him but stretched obediently as he spread them. He pulled them out and wiped them on his leg as he rose to his knees and guided the head of his cock into place. Both men moaned as Joe pushed in. 

Unlike their first coupling where Nicky had been mostly passive, this time the man fucked back with determination. He had his hands under him again and drove his ass back against Joe’s hips as he tossed his head and gritted his teeth. 

”Need to feel me deep, habibi?” Joe asked. He wrapped his arms around Nick’s chest and pulled them back until he sat on his heels and the Genovan was speared on his dick with his legs splayed and reclining against Joe’s torso. 

Nicky gave a full-body shudder. “Damn. Good.” 

Joe continued thrusting and ran his nose from the knob of his right shoulder up to his ear where he took the lobe between his teeth. His left palm swept up and down over Nick’s abdominals to his pectoral. “I desire to be taken by you in this way,” he said, grinning as Nicky’s body went rigid. He could see the omega’s cock jerk at the thought. Nick brought his arms up and sunk all ten fingers into Joe’s curly hair and then tensed so that it felt his entire body rippled against Joe’s, from his collarbone to his cock. 

“The alpha wants to be fucked like a drooling omega?” Nick said. The skepticism and edge of bitterness in his voice couldn’t erase how Joe had noticed the way his body had responded, and the alpha quickly responded with words trying to reinforce the equality he felt between them. 

“I want to be taken by a strong man. Opened up on his thick fingers and be pulled onto his cock until I cannot feel the breath in my lungs,” Joe said, wrapping a hand around Nicolò’s rampant dick. His knot was growing again. “To feel his hair on my buttocks and lean thighs under mine.” 

”That’s what I feel now,” Nicky said. “I’d... I would....” His thought stuttered and died as his focus contracted to the solid pressure in his ass. 

”Would you fuck me like that, Nicolò di Genova?” Joe said, his voice tight as his entire physical form convulsed. His white teeth bit down on the cords that stood out from Nicky’s neck. 

Ah! God, yes,” Nick gasped. 

Was that an agreement or just praise?” Joe teased several moments later, when they had fallen on their sides and remained spooned together. 

”Hmm, could be both. I will have to reassess everything once the door is open and reality crashes in.” 

”You know, I do find a strategic mind very attractive. I, too, want to assess you. Discover what jobs you have done and the ways you prefer to kill men.” 

”I have no desire to kill a good man. Are you a good man, Yusuf?” 

Joe licked the back of Nick’s neck and tightened his hold around him. “I believe that I can be both.”

* * *

"Was there anything worthwhile on those memory boxes?" 

"You know that they're called hard drives, Quynh," Booker said, ignoring her attempts to rile him up. She was just bored while he did work and Andy was still on her way to Salzburg from Honduras. "But honestly not much. He's good. Just a shadow and a few muzzle flashes from stolen guns. There is so little evidence of his infiltration that I'm almost surprised that he bothered planning on retrieving the footage." 

"You only need to trip up once," Quynh reminded him. 

"This guy's been in action at least twelve years with no hint of a team covering his ass." Booker palmed his face in frustration. "Every intelligence organization in the world wants to know how he does it. Who he works for. I want to know if he's like us." 

"I know that's your personal theory, but I don't think it's likely," Quynh said. "I'm finding this fixation of yours quite dull. We haven't crossed paths with him, so why should we care?" 

She didn't care and shouldn't have to, Booker knew. This was just a hobby of his, and she and Andy and Joe had been nice enough to placate him this past week when he had thought he had narrowed down the agent's possible next missions. They had been lucky, and Quynh was in place to get this slim amount of evidence of the man's existence. Hopefully Joe's track would pan out, because the unknown guy had either successfully misled Booker or managed to slip through either Quynh and Andy's fingers. 

"It's just... a feeling I have," Booker said, unable to explain it any more. 

Quynh shoved aside a clutter of schnapps bottles and Mozartkugel wrappers off an end table to get to a vibrating phone. Her noise of surprise made Booker turn to see her read the message with a raised eyebrow. "Joe found him." 

* * *

"I think I killed you," Nicky said, coming in from the bathroom still toweling off after a quick shower. 

Joe, who was stretching luxuriously across the entire mattress without any regard to the wet spots, just yawned. "You didn't exhaust me to death despite trying very hard," he said, waggling his eyebrows and leering comically. "But earlier? Yeah." 

"No. I mean, at the siege of Jerusalem." 

Joe concentrated and tried to pull up those very old memories and fit them to the modern-looking man standing naked at the foot of the bed. "Longer hair? Beard? Maybe. Covered with armor and blood you invaders all looked much the same." 

Nick rolled his eyes. "Everyone had longer hair and beards back then. And were also usually filthy and stunk." 

"Maybe you Franks did, but we were very clean outside of battle. Didn't you guys think bathing meant you were a witch or something? And there you were, just coming over and slaughtering us for our heathen practices." There wasn't any real anger in Joe's tone; just a dry and ironic edge that invited Nick to join him in mocking the superstitions of those bygone societies. 

"I think I sliced you from here to here," Nick said, frowning, tracing a line across Joe's lower torso. Before he could pull away Joe grabbed his hand and put it on his soft cock. 

"If you're gonna touch me, be of use," he said, baring his teeth in a flash of a smile. 

Nick pulled his hand away. "I'm serious! I think I fucking disembowled you. Then you stabbed me above my cuisses into my groin, making me bleed out of my femoral artery." 

"Do you still hold a grudge?" Yusuf asked curiously. "Because I don't. I apologize for the dick move, but it's an effective tactic when one is immobile on the ground. And obviously everything grew back fine." 

He had meant this to be a serious conversation about their possible origins of immortality, but Nick finally had to crack a smile. "You are impossible!" 

Joe grabbed for his hand again and his long limbs flailed to counterbalance them as he hauled Nicky down. "We are men who can't die. Who perhaps gave each other our first deaths and have been reunited after almost a millennium. We are both impossible." He rolled Nicky under him and went to work gently biting at his neck. 

"Heat's over and my arse is sore," Nicky complained, though his arms tried to pull Joe even closer. 

"Oh, you poor supernaturally-fast-healing little creampuff," Joe cooed facetiously. "I was hoping to take my turn, but if you are so incapacitated-" Nicky's immediate amorous response cut his teasing short. He had grown familiar with Joe's lips and mouth in such a small time, though the uncertainty of what would happen once the door unlocked was never too far from his mind. 

Nick pulled away so he could ask, "Was that a genuine offer?" 

Joe slapped his flank. "Only if you can find some lube." 

While he rifled through the contents of a drawer, Nick reflected on how easy this intimacy and banter felt with this man. If this wasn't just a con, Nicolò had some God or Fates to rail against for letting them start their journeys together only to separate the two of them for so long. 

If this wasn't a ruse, Nick might have a handful of people he might be able to trust. But he couldn't take Joe's words as truth. Not yet. 

"How would you like it?" Nicky asked, turning back to the bed and the alpha with a squeeze bottle in hand. 

Joe was fondling his own balls and his brown eyes smouldered. "Take me on my back so that I might look upon the face of an angel," he said. 

"Must you say such things? You are only embarrassing yourself," Nicky lied. He could feel himself blushing. 

Joe grinned like he found Nicky's scoffing amusing. He probably did. "I'll admit it would sound less cheesy in Spanish. Do you speak Spanish?" 

_"Si,"_ Nick said, "Though I've never been able to shake my Argentinian accent. Got me into trouble once in the '70s at the _Base Naval de Rota_." 

That small tidbit on information earned him an unexpected look of wide-eyed appreciation from Joe. "You've got stories! I want- no, wait, I want to hear them when you tell them to Booker and Andy." 

There was a surge of emotions within Nick at that idea. Just the thought of being able to share some of his memories with people who might understand them in all their context was anticipatory and gleeful. He had to stifle that down with caution, though the hope was getting harder and harder to try to lock away. "You wouldn't rather hear me talk than get fucked?" 

"Ideally I would prefer for you to do both," Joe said with a cocky tilt of his chin, "But I fear that you will be too overcome by pleasure to be coherent." 

And Nicky wasn't coherent, losing the ability to string together any sounds more understandable than swears as he pushed Joe's thighs up and apart to make space for his dick in the hairy cleft and tight aperture between his buttocks. Joe's hands were always in motion as he grabbed and stroked and scratched over all the places of Nicky's skin that he could reach while he groaned out compliments and prayerful phrases. Aside from the responsiveness due to Joe's personality, there was a more subtle chemical exchange due to their dynamics. Nicolò had never, ever topped an alpha before, but the act brought along with it a similar contact high as getting penetrated by one. Fucking another omega had usually ended up being disappointing for both, and betas simply lacked an entire hormonal layer to the interaction which would have been more than merely physically fulfilling if Nicolò didn't have a very long history of being with alphas. While Nick had always enjoyed sticking his cock into beta men, this made all of those experiences pale in comparison. 

The thought embedded itself inside Nick's mind: if this was a con on Joe's part his betrayal was going to be met with rage and pain at Nick's hands. Sex this perfect couldn't just happen and then be taken away from him without consequences. 

Joe seemed to sense the desperation of Nicky's realization. He held the Genovan close after they had both come and whispered loving nonsense into his ear until the tension in Nick's body finally relaxed. 

* * *

They woke from a nap simultaneously after visions of sand and blood and a woman dying. 

Nick assumed that his thrashing had woken up Joe. "Shit. Sorry." 

Joe sat up with a sense of urgency. "Is there paper? Pen?" 

"I don't think so. Why?" 

"It's a new one. I need my phone." The man scrambled off the bed and into the bathroom. He had the device to his ear when he came back in. "Yeah, Book, we saw it." After a second Joe's eyes darted to Nick. "Uh... damn. Sorry," he said to Nick with a genuine look of remorse before he addressed Booker again. "Yeah, you were right. He is one of us. Don't gloat about it. ...No, I don't think he wants to talk you now. We haven't really discussed it much. ...Hi Andy, Quynh, what details did we make out? We can talk about the guy later." 

Nick felt a sense of relief at the small amount of information about him that Joe had passed on, even accidentally. He listened to Joe as he shared what he could remember seeing from those confusing flashes. "The knife was a pesh-kabz," Nick added, and his heart fluttered as Joe gave him a nod and a smile as he passed along that bit of intel. It was like being a part of something again. 

"Andy is going to get her," Joe said, as he hung up. "She seems to be a U.S. Marine in Afghanistan. We have a last name, at least." 

"So these dreams are real." 

"We do what we can to try to find the new immortal as soon as possible. This is only the second one for me, after Booker." 

"I suppose if at least two of you were together then you knew that they were more than dreams," Nick said. "I remember dreaming about the women and Booker frequently until they stopped. I never thought that they were real people until you mentioned it the other day." 

"If we killed each other at the same time maybe that's why we never dreamed of each other," Joe said. 

Nick shrugged. "What time is it? The door should unlock soon." 

Joe put his phone on the bureau and sat back down on the bed. "Do you want to join us?" 

"I want to meet them," Nick said after a moment, not willing to commit to any more. Luckily Joe seemed to be happy with that. 

"Would you be willing to go to Austria with me? Quynh and Booker are already there." 

Nick thought about how he didn't keep many weapons here in India. He had a sword, but his skills were probably rusty and it would be hard to keep the weapon a secret from Joe if they traveled together. 

Again, Joe seemed to intuit what Nick was considering. "We can meet in Salzburg if you want to travel separately," he said. "But I already have a contact with a plane on call to fly up there." 

Some actions just required a leap of faith, Nick thought. Faith was now an atrophied muscle for him, but he had been a priest once. Besides, faith and trust could be given in increments; as long as Nick had a knife and kept his attention sharp, he should at least be a match for Joe by himself. As for the others, Nick would be the one to dictate the time and place of their meetings. If they wanted to find him so bad then they could be the ones to hand over some control as a declaration of peace. 

"I will travel with you. But I will not go to them immediately," Nick said. 

Joe smiled like this wasn't an insult or sign of mistrust at all. "Good."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like "Casa di Cazzo Grosso" for the title, but I try to keep titles and summaries non-explicit.  
> [Written for an awesomely detailed prompt.](https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/1468.html?thread=203964#cmt203964)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joe looked around. "I count four. Isn't that a bit overkill?" Both Booker and Quynh looked interested. Joe pointed a finger discreetly at a phone duct taped to a floral planter then to one attached to a street lamp.  
> "Bring me all seven and I'll let you through the door," Nick taunted before ringing off.  
> "...Seven?" Joe echoed, impressed.  
> Booker threw up his hands. "He makes us look like utter amateurs!"
> 
> Nick contributes his skills to help the team rescue Andy and Nile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's get the entire team together! Please let me know how I did. I think this part is a lot more snarky in its tone, so I hope it isn't too jarring a shift.

Booker watched Joe come in, stepping lightly with a wide grin and wheeling Quynh around in a dance before she could even close the door behind them. _"Merde,"_ he said. "You had to go and fall in love with him, didn't you?" 

"You should be happy I did! Otherwise he never would have come with me to Austria to meet you!" Joe let Quynh loose so he could skip over all of two metres of floor to give Book a smacking kiss on the side of his face. 

"And you had the gall to tell me not to be smug over the phone," Booker griped, wiping his face. 

Quynh had her head tilted and smiled as she observed Joe. "I have never seen you like this." 

"When do we meet him?" Book asked. 

"Tomorrow. He will text the details." 

"Do you trust him?" Quynh asked. 

Joe let his face lose its giddy smile. "I slept beside him. He is cautious but not unreasonable. It will be hard for him to trust because he has been alone for a long time. I gave him my word that we would not have any guns." 

Booker frowned and protested. "Now, that is just-" 

Quynh held up a palm to silence him. "These young ones forget how deadly bladed weapons are. Rely too much on their firearms." She spoke to Joe but smirked at Booker. 

"Oh, he is older than Book. Sorry, man, but you are still the youngest." 

Booker shrugged and reminded Joe, with pleasure, "Not anymore. How old is he? What name does he use?" 

Joe made himself more comfortable on the couch, spreading his arms across the back. "I vowed that I would not share any specifics. You will just have to wait." 

* * *

It was a blustery morning with sporadic rain. The seasonal weather meant that there wasn't a crush of tourists in the Altstadt Salzburg district. Nick had done his recon and texted Joe the address of a building hidden in a canyon of the narrow streets and multi-story buildings. It would be difficult for anyone to have a sniper well positioned with the winding streets, and there would be plenty of witnesses to prevent a violent scene but too few to hide a troop of soldiers. Though three immortals might be enough to take him down if he didn't have other precautions in place. 

Nick had been able to buy and rig up seven phones that streamed a comprehensive, if low-quality, live video feed of the cafe's outdoor eating area. It was mostly deserted as it was just before sixteen-hundred local time and well before the dinner rush, and the few patrons were dining inside. 

As instructed, Nick got a call from Joe. "We're here. Should we come inside?" His voice was almost jolly with eagerness for the meeting, and Nick smiled and hoped that the man wasn't smooth enough to dissemble so well. 

"Please walk down the road southeast and to the left. Then take the next right. I'll meet you at a table outside the cafe." 

"Sounds good," Joe said. His phone was on speaker and he left it on. Nick could hear another man's voice say "Secondary location," in a griping tone and Joe reply with, "Shouldn't be a surprise to you! You're his number one fan _because_ of his impeccable situational caution." 

"Meet you in ten," Nick said, and Joe gave a confirmation and hung up. 

He was there in two minutes, letting his gaze roam around the roofs and storefronts and stone-paved street. Joe let Quynh and Booker sit with their backs to the cafe's outside wall and had his turned in a vulnerable show of trust to the street. They hadn't pulled a fourth chair into place for him, but there were a few at the neighboring tables Nick could requisition. 

Nick had to take a breath to try to quell the crawling feeling on the back of his neck. The fourth immortal, Andy, was supposed to be tracking down the new girl. Nick hadn't had time to even begin to try to confirm her movements, so he was still nervous. 

"Done this a hundred times," he said, twisting the truth just a bit. He had never walked into a potential ambush planning on befriending people instead of quickly eliminating them. 

He walked into view looking like a native in an entirely new outfit bought last night, from jacket to shoes. His secret weapons (besides his, you know, actual hidden weapons) began with the transparent layer of paint he had layered over his face. It was unnoticeable to the casual observer, but Nick knew that the other three people's eyes would pick up on the way it slightly blurred the edges of his face. He had his jacket hood up and pinned into place with straight pins through the inner lining to clips in his hair so that it wouldn't slip and obscure his peripheral vision. He had also put gel inserts into his shoes to alter his movement patterns and balance. 

Joe picked up on the small changes as Nick approached but didn't dim his hearty greeting. Nick clocked the aborted movements that told him that Joe was restraining himself from giving Nick a particularly warm welcome and let a genuine smile slip out. He went out of his way by a few paces to grab the back of a chair and pull it up to the table. "I'm Nick," he said, looking at Quynh and then Booker. 

"Quynh," the woman said neutrally, peering at his face. "Are you wearing make-up?" 

"Anti-surveillance. It messes with the optics of cameras," Nick said. "So you're the guy who managed to pin me down," he said to the scruffy blond. 

"I just, I mean, narrowed down the probable locations and got lucky," Booker's tongue stumbled a bit over his words like a teenager talking to his crush. "How old are you?" He blurted out. "How long have you been active? What have you done?" 

Joe chuckled and shook his head before angling it so he could catch Nicky's eye on a way that made him hot. "Superfan. I told you." 

"I can't give up all my secrets at our first meeting," Nick said. "But I'll answer some questions. I'm pretty sure my first death was right after I fatally stabbed Yusuf here." 

"It was destiny," Joe said, starry-eyed and low-voiced, as he reached a hand out to Nicky. 

Booker groaned and looked imploringly up at the cafe's canopy while Quynh giggled. "So. Myanmar," the Frenchman said, tapping the table to get them back on track. "Before that, Venezuela, right?" 

"Yes," Nick admitted, squeezing Joe's fingers. 

"The border," Booker insisted. "How did you do it?" 

"That was nothing. You should be asking about the boat chase," Nick teased, getting quite a satisfying reaction from the man. 

* * *

"I like him," Quynh said, forty-two minutes later as she sipped a drink and they watched Nick leave. 

"We need to learn from him," Booker said, still sober. It was unusual for him to sit in one place for so long without gulping down hard liquor, but Nick had distracted him. "You three have kept us in the iron age, but he adapted to the fucking technological bleeding edge! Anti-surveillance make-up and he's not even on a mission!" Booker was practically rhapsodising Nick's praises. 

"He's an omega," Quynh noted with a knowing sparkle in her eye. "No wonder you're so enamoured." 

"An omega?" Booker said. He politely suppressed most of his "ew" face; like most modern people, he was uncomfortable with the idea of alpha and omega dynamics. He had been thoroughly educated by Andy on the subject, but society had conditioned him to consider it an unsavory historical peccadillo. Of course, most of society didn't deal with surviving alpha specimens on a daily basis. "But he doesn't look like-" 

Joe practically growled. "Pornography is not a reliable source of information! You don't have the glands to pick up the chemicals, so you won't even notice Nicky's an omega." 

"Unless you fuck him," Quynh said slyly, examining her nails. 

"No!" 

"Tone it down! I'm not gonna go after your boyfriend, Joe!" Booker said. "Let's just agree to never talk about this subject again." 

Joe's phone rang. He was pleased to see it was Nicky. _"Ciao bello."_

"Do you want to keep snarling at your friend or meet me in a hotel?" 

"How do you...?" Joe looked around. "I count four. Isn't that a bit overkill?" Both Booker and Quynh looked interested. Joe pointed a finger discreetly at a phone duct taped to a floral planter then to one attached to a street lamp. 

"Bring me all seven and I'll let you through the door," Nick taunted before ringing off. 

"...Seven?" Joe echoed, impressed. 

Booker threw up his hands. "He makes us look like utter amateurs!" 

* * *

After setting all seven phones down on the hotel room table without a word, Joe gave Nicky an imploring look. Nick raised his arms and Joe bolted forward to embrace him tightly. He had realized before, when they had prepared to leave Nick's place in Kolkata, that Joe seemed to get particular fulfillment from holding Nicky. Maybe it was a scent thing, pheromones between especially compatible sexual partners of the two dynamics, because Joe always buried his face in Nicky's neck for a noticeable amount of time before he pulled away for a kiss. 

Joe's arms held him close, pulling their chests together as he hooked his bearded chin over Nick's shoulder and inhaled for a moment before he ran his hands over Nicky's back and shoulders. The Genovan wrapped him up and squeezed a bit more tentatively, still feeling very new and awkward at this. He was used to grabbing hands and fumbling mouths as being just a precursor to sucking or fucking with hook-ups, not this extended touching and holding that seemed to be an independent act to be savored as its own kind of intimacy. 

This hugging was becoming more appealing, though, as Nick discovered the nuances of what he could experience of Joe like this. There was something protective and sheltering. Closeness and trust. A slow ignition of lust as their bodies pressed together through the barriers of their clothing. 

When Joe leaned back he cupped Nicky's face in one hand and left his other arm slung around the omega's waist. "Ah, Nicky," he said, his dark gaze meeting Nick's lighter one before he closed his eyes and dove forward to taste his mouth. 

"It hasn't been that long," Nick protested when the first round of kissing was done. 

Joe's white teeth contrasted with his black beard. "Every minute away from you leaves my soul longing for the return of its heart." 

Nick could feel himself blushing. "We've known each other less than five days." 

"Our spirits have been entwined for almost a thousand years," Joe countered. 

"You have a virulent strain of romanticism." 

"Incurable," Joe agreed. He shook Nick gently by the shoulder. "You feel our connection, too, though. You just aren't willing to trust it." When Nicky averted his eyes and shrugged, Joe tipped his chin up and kissed his forehead. "Not yet. But I plan to do my best to convince you." 

* * *

A phone woke up Nicky and Joe. Nick took a moment to enjoy the way Joe was curled protectively around him before he pulled his hand from their tangle of fingers and reached for the source of the noise. 

"It's yours." 

Joe pressed his face even more firmly between Nicky's shoulderblades before he took it and swiped it on. "What?" 

"Andy didn't make her check-in," Quynh said. 

He grumbled and rolled onto his back and rubbed his eyes. "What?" 

Nick, however, sat up. He had overheard Quynh's first statement, but he moved away to give them privacy. It was rather adorable how long Joe took to get his brain back online when woken abruptly. 

"Do we want his help?" Joe asked. Nick assumed it was a negative because Joe's mouth opened. Nick just shook his head and Joe reluctantly didn't argue. "Fine, yeah, I'll be right there." He hung up. 

Nick found Joe's pants and tossed them at him. "Don't try to force my presence onto them. This sounds like a family thing. Quynh, particularly, doesn't trust me." 

"Andy can take care of herself," Joe said, with a yawn. "I'm sure everything's fine." 

"Then Quynh is the one that needs you." 

Joe sat up and grabbed at Nicky's ass but the man evaded him and just shot him a grin. "Go back to your family, _cagnolino._ " 

"Puppy?" Joe said with mock affront. "Well, if you think I'm some lapdog then you're a feral cat!" 

Nick pressed his lips together thoughtfully and nodded before his expression relaxed into a playful smile. "There is truth to that, I suppose. Listen. I'm gonna spend some time at one of my hideouts." He bent over to give Joe a deep and satisfying kiss. "But get in touch if you need help. I don't have anything urgent lined up for a while." 

Joe caught his hand. His dark eyes searched Nicolò's. "Promise me that you won't slip off into the ether." 

"I promise," Nicky said truthfully. "Destiny, remember? I am not going to risk losing you for another nine hundred years." 

* * *

The new member to their exclusive immortality club was Nile Freeman. She had been killed, woken up, and then freaked out. 

Andy had pulled off a masterful extraction, but Nile had thrown a wrench in the works. There had been a plane crash, massive drug seizure, and then some under-the-table dealings between Afghan leaders and American brass. Both Andy and Nile had been taken into custody by the US Army and taken back to base. Booker had lost the trail there. 

Nick hadn't. When Joe finally asked him, with his team's permission, if he could dig up anything else, Nick somehow narrowed their location down to Kenya where the US Army Medical Research Unit had a partnership with a state medical research institute. It wouldn't have been something any of them had predicted, but Nick assured them that the USAMRU was affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense and that he figured they might be taken to an even more secure DoD facility on US soil. 

The Institute campus wasn't a place where any of the four of them could exactly blend in with a low profile. Via a long conference call they ruled out any of them taking on a visiting medical lecturer persona because of the time crunch that wouldn't allow for a convincing alias and background to be created. Quynh was in favor of a nighttime infil and extraction, but they all knew that they didn't have enough intel on a precise location, and a wide-area op would take too long and get too much attention. 

"Let me reach out to a few local contacts," Nick finally said. 

"What do you mean by contacts?" Booker asked. 

"I don't exactly have friends," Nick said self-deprecatingly, "But I network online with a ton of interesting people in legitimate and illegitimate fields. If you groom a stranger over months or years you would be surprised by how much someone you've never actually met will do for you. Or, you know, there's manipulation or blackmail." 

After ending the call Booker frowned at Joe. "I figured you would have better taste in boyfriends. It sounds like this guy can be an asshole." 

"I don't consider you to be an asshole but I met several Czechs who spat on your corpse and called you an irredeemable whoreson." 

"They deserved it. And we don't pull in innocent people if we can help it." 

Joe shrugged. "It's all relative. How do you think your mysterious rogue operative accomplished all those feats you laud him for? No hero's armor ever looks shiny at a close distance." 

* * *

They were all in place just two days later. Nick had leveraged a grad student and he had located a promising location. Joe had assumed an Asian Kenyan persona, as he had the largest chance of passing for one of the country's minority of Indian or Pakastani immigrants. He was going in as a telecom technician to fix the building's internet, which had gone down due to some meddling. Quynh was his backup and driver: her hair, accessories, and make-up making her almost as inconspicuous. 

Nick and Booker were overseeing from a distance. Nick had his modified sniper rifle set up on a nightstand that had been turned on its side and propped by an open window. Booker had two phones and a laptop set up to monitor the site as well as the local police frequency streaming from a speaker and one earbud tuned into the campus' security channel. 

Book and Nick had argued over Plan B suppression tactics and Nick had ceded to Booker's preference for Forane gas instead of Halothane, even though he had found the side effects a bit more severe, because Book had already had some of those gas grenades on hand. 

Joe got into the building and then into the more secured area easily. Walking in alone, disguised, was more of a spy than soldier thing and made him nervous, but he had to rescue Andy and the new girl and had his team at his back. 

Andy and Nile were in a locked office, windowless except for the small pane of glass in the door. Joe waved at them then backtracked to the guy he had taken out with a blood choke to feel him up for a key card. A minute later he was inside the room and picking their handcuffs. 

"Really, boss? You could've practically walked right out through the building!" Joe teased. 

He got a tight Andy-smile in return. "Still don't know where this building is. And this one wasn't ready to trust me yet." 

"I'm Joe," Joe said as he smiled and gestured for her to stand up and turn around. He got to work on her cuffs. "We're in Kenya. You two have been picked up and detained to go into the loving hands of the U.S. Department of Defense via Army Medical Research." 

"I assume it wasn't Book who hacked the DoD," Andy said wryly. Joe was able to toss her a wink before Nile took their attention. 

"The Department of Defense? Why?" 

"We're tasty potential lab rats," Joe said. "People used to think we were supernatural. Demons and witches. But now science wants to figure out why we are the way we are and how to steal the secret for the rich and powerful." 

Nile looked lost as she rubbed her wrists. "The U.S. doesn't do that." 

"Every government changes it's definition of 'human' whenever it benefits them," Andy said. "If you are something more than a Marine grunt now, something more dangerous, they would rather tell the world you were killed in action and take you off the field to dissect you." 

Joe nodded and met Nile's eyes with as much kindness and sympathy as he could. "You want to stay free? You should stick with us. Others who are like you." 

The young woman made a thoughtful face which was as much of an agreement of trust as Joe could expect right now. "If you wanna follow me, I have someone I want you both to meet." He led the way back out into the hallway. "His name's Nicky," Joe said. "The Crusader. The one you and Quynh used to dream about." 

"But you never did." 

"Turns out we gave each other our first deaths." Joe knew he sounded pathetically dreamy but didn't care. He was certain that they had an epic love story to live out. 

Andy huffed a laugh. "Only you, Joe. Is your Nicky as ridiculously besotted?" 

"Don't know yet, but I live in hope." 

It was a cakewalk to clip the wires of a fire escape door (the Western world and its insistence on safety infrastructure was a blessing) and go out to a parking lot where Quynh had the van running. Joe opened the back door for Nile and let Andy climb in the front for a quick reunion with Quynh before they headed out to rendezvous with Book and Nick. 

Less than one hour later they were on a small cargo plane heading to Addas Ababa. 

"Deja vu," Nile said. 

"This plane belongs to a legitimate company," Andy said. 

"This is why I prefer Europe. Closer borders, common currency," Booker griped. "No settling for long hauls on frigid, rattling, bare steel floors. Trains," he added, with a melancholic sigh. "Proper passenger trains." 

Quynh shook her head. "Soft babies. Didn't live through times where horse and camel were the only ways to get anywhere. Months of traveling between places." 

"There were boats," Joe added. "But people didn't really think there was anyplace across the sea to go." 

It said a lot about Nile's personality that she could interrupt the grouchy complaining of beings millennia older than she with a wry aside addressed to Nick. "And it was uphill both ways, too, right?" 

Nick shrugged. "Not many straight, flat highways without bulldozers to pave the way. Valid complaint." 

Nile squinted at him. "You're the new guy. You're as old as him?" She nodded at Joe who was sitting to him. "Did you really meet during the Crusades?" 

"It could hardly be described as meeting," Nick demurred. "But yes." 

"And they just found you?" Her voice was laden with either suspicion or skepticism. 

Nick shrugged. "I never thought the dreams meant anything." 

"We must have crossed paths at some point," Andy said. "Where did you go after your first death?" 

"I was a Franciscan for awhile, until the inquisitions began. Went East to fight the Mongols. Uh, War of the Vespers came next, I think, and that was Sicily. Took a break from major conflicts until the Byzantium Civil War, then tried to save Christians from Shuja-ud-din Timur." 

"We fought for Timur," Quynh said. 

Nick shrugged and gave them a half-smile. "Deemed undefeated. What do they say... killed about 5% of the population back then?" 

"Over fifteen million," Andy said. 

"What the fuck," Nile said, looking between then like she was expecting a brawl to bust out. 

Joe waved a hand. "He wanted to spread enlightenment. Education and art and science. The Christians were always oppressed by their own leaders. Not that killing them was any better in retrospect." 

She looked at Nick and he just shrugged again. "14th century was a long time ago. I'm not holding any grudges." 

"The 14th century. Jesus Christ," Nile muttered. 

"Debrief," Andy said. "What happened in Kolkata?" 

Quynh laughed at Booker's pained groan. Joe gave Nick a cheeky, smug grin with lifted eyebrows and readjusted his grip on Nicky's hand. 

"Joe followed me into my lockdown for my heat. Door had a timed lock, and the idiot just strolled in and asked me 'Who are you?' while letting the door close behind him." 

Andy tipped her head back against the bulkhead and Joe could interpret her sigh. "In my defense, I was hit with his scent and went stupid." 

"...So he was easy to take down and kill with his own knife," Nick added, with a bit of a smug expression of his own. 

"I was turned to stone by your strength and beauty," Joe murmured in Italian, lifting their joined hands to kiss the back of Nicky's. 

Nile didn't get the joke that made everyone except the couple groan until Nick said archly, "You were certainly made stiff," in English. 

"TMI!" That seemed to be a language that only Nick and Booker were familiar with, judging by the looks she got. 

"He was hardly surprised that I was alive again when he came back in the room, dripping from the shower," Joe continued. "Didn't immediately accept my offer to help him through his heat. Put me in handcuffs and locked me in the bathroom. I took a nap, texted you guys, then forced my way out when he didn't respond and found him set on dying repeatedly until his heat was over." 

"I can't believe I forgot about your phone," Nick groaned. 

"You had other things on your mind, habibi." Joe gave him a gooey look that actually made Nick soften his own demeanor a fraction even in front of four witnesses. 

"Wait," Nile said, _"Heat?"_

"Alpha, omega, alpha, alpha," Booker said, pointing them out with an eyeroll. "Old timers." 

"I thought that was just a weird porn thing," the American said. 

Quynh made a sound very close to a growl. "Puritans left a tragedy of a legacy in the New World. At least Book had been taught a few facts." 

"Joe has a book at Safehouse Charlie," Booker said. "It's in Greek, but there are drawings. Graphic, graphic drawings," he added, making a face. 

"Educational drawings," Joe insisted. 

Andy cracked her neck. "Don't worry about it, Nile. It's mostly glands and pheromones. Nothing you'll notice." 

"Beg to differ, Boss," Booker contradicted. "She'll need a primer to understand why you and Quynh sound like you keep killing each other." 

"They just enjoy being loud," Joe said. "Alphas aren't all like that." 

"TMI," Nile repeated, looking a bit scared. 

* * *

Nick and Joe both had passports under assumed names and took a commercial flight to Charles de Gaulle, managing to maintain proper distance even as they were tucked in next to each other in economy class seats, though Joe did touch Nicky's thigh for most of the flight because it could be hidden with their reading materials. The rest of them decided to make the trip to Goussainville using more varied transportation out of necessity or just to avoid Joe and Nick's "inevitable canoodling," as Quynh put it. 

Joe was actually chuffed instead of slighted; that they were allowing Nick to enter one of their homiest sanctuaries with only Joe was a major sign of trust. They might have _days_ before the rest of the team returned. 

With a stop at a rented locker with a combination lock to pick up keys and a detour to a storage facility, they had a car. "I have a flat in Le Thillay I would like to stop at," Nick said. It was a tiny place without even a real kitchen or bed, but it had a supply of only slightly musty clothes from the '90s and early '00s. And a sword that Nick looked longingly at. 

"Bring it," Joe said. 

"It's not weird? I mean, it's not as strategic as a gun these days-" 

"Andy has a giant fucking axe she still enjoys using far too often. The three of us can give you some practice. Bring it." 

Nick picked it up, unsheathed it a third of the length to quickly check its condition, and then handed it to Joe while he selected a few other things to put in a pack with some clothes. 

* * *

"A church?" Nick said, when the car pulled up to an old building mostly hidden by foliage. 

"Don't worry," Joe said with a wink. "We can do all our fucking in the rectory if you find yourself worrying about the eyes of God." He parked the car and turned off the engine. 

Nick grabbed his arm before Joe could get out. "I have no scruples about bending you over a pew." 

Joe's answering grin was feral. "A pew? Nicolò, I would spread you naked over the altar and eat you out with more devotion than you ever felt receiving Holy Communion." 

_"Jesus Chri-"_ Nicky stopped his oath with a groan as Joe snickered and pulled himself from his lax hold and left the car. Nicky tried to calm his excited body, but Joe was opening the door and pulling him to his feet before he could make any progress. 

Joe leaned him against the sedan's closed back door and dropped to his knees. He squeezed Nicky's dick through his black jeans. "Does blasphemy turn you on, Father Nicolò?" 

Nicky grabbed him by his curly hair and met his heated gaze and satisfied smirk. "Your filthy thoughts and silver tongue turn me on." 

The other man affected an expression of wounded pride. "You would merit my tongue merely silver? Give me permission to prove to you its skill is worth gold." 

"Put your mouth to better use and change my mind," dared Nicky, releasing his head. 

Joe unbuttoned his clothes and let Nicky's cock spring out into the cool air. He let his partner squirm for a minute as he buried his face between the man's thighs nuzzling and smelling him intimately as Nicky bit off moans of frustration and tried to keep his hips from thrusting. When Joe finally put his mouth over his prick the temperature contrast alone made Nicky's knees tremble. When he came he couldn't tell if the roaring in his ears was an approaching plane or just the rush of blood in his body. 

"It's starting to rain. Let's get inside," Joe said, sounding maddeningly unruffled. He stood up and brushed off the knees of his jeans and Nick ambushed him while he was distracted, looping his arms over his head and opening Joe's lips with his own and enjoying the hint of taste on his tongue. 

"So?" Joe said, expectantly, "Silver or gold?" 

Nick stepped back, rolled his eyes, and gave him a light shove on the shoulder. "Fine. You're golden. But please never call me 'Father' again."


	3. Chapter 3

Their six days together in Goussainville were like a miracle. Every longing thought Joe'd ever had, every shameful nudge of envy when he saw Andy and Quynh give each other their small, significant smiles was chased away by the joy he had now that Nicky was right there with him. 

Nick and Quynh brushing up on their sword skills in the overgrown churchyard was a sight that inflamed Joe beyond reason. Nicky was more cautious than Quynh, didn't expose himself to deliver a good thrust or stab to his opponent. Joe supposed that Quynh was either more inured to pain or less guarded about being identified as abnormal. Certainly when he was alone Nick had done his best to conceal his immortality. The proof of that defensive mindset was shown in the way he held his sword and favored blocking and moving his body rather than parrying and riposting with only his arms changing position. His fighting method meant that Quynh chased him around the clearing. She was fast and suicidally single-minded, but Nick had the stamina to make her work for every wound she scored. His flexibility cancelled out the liability of using his sword two-handed, and the length of the blade gave him better reach than Quynh. 

When Nick and Quynh stepped away from each other, shaking out their cramped knuckles and catching their breaths, Nick caught Joe's rapt stare and almost looked bashful. 

"Let me see to those cuts," Joe said, approaching him and handing Nick his beer. 

Nick took a drink then said, "I'm fine. Already healed." 

Joe grabbed his shirt and wiggled his fingers through one of the slashes in the material. "Maybe I was talking about your shirt. Either way, you must take it off. Now." 

"Take it to the bedroom, boys," Quynh said. 

Joe followed Nicky into the house and then into their room. After closing the door he embraced Nicky from behind, caressing his torso with his hands and his neck with his mouth. 

"Judging by how horny you get seeing me fight, I'm not sure I want you watching my ass in any real fights," Nick said with quiet humor. 

"I can think of no better man to watch or cover you arse than I, _caro mio._ " 

Joe could practically hear Nicky blush and roll his eyes simultaneously. "Maybe I would prefer someone who would invest his attention into keeping himself unharmed than getting distracted," Nick responded, assisting the other man in pulling his shirt off. 

"I find it very hard to be concerned about any of that at this moment." Joe spanned his hand over the base of Nicky's neck and nibbled at his ear. Nicky tipped the bottle to swallow down the dregs of beer and Joe felt the movements of his throat. When the Genovan tensed to bend over and put the bottle down Joe held him in place, pressing his hips against Nicky's behind. 

Nick gave up on bending over and just let the bottle drop to the floor carefully. "You're insatiable." 

"You can always tell me no. I'd be satisfied to feel the warm regard you feel for me in your heavy gaze, or the tenderness of your fingertips at the most innocent touch. Reassure me that I am foremost in your thoughts, and I will be the happiest man on this Earth." Joe kept nuzzling into Nicky's neck and along his right shoulder, giving little kisses between phrases. 

Nicky's heart pounded faster. This thing between them was already so _deep._ Joe was intense with his emotions, fearless in expressing what he felt and wanted even if he disguised it with pretty, poetic words. It was exhilarating and heady to be gifted his affections so undeservingly. Nicky's body and heart were drawn strongly to Joe, but his head still argued for more time and caution. 

"You have been foremost in my thoughts since we met," Nick admitted. "But don't be satisfied just with words. I'm wet for you and need your cock right now because talking definitely will not do the job." 

Joe fingers pressed into his skin more aggressively as he uttered a lingering hum as he ground his dick against Nicky. His hands drifted down to Nicky's waistband and fondled the button. "How would you like to receive me?" 

Instead of answering out loud, Nicky stepped toward the bed, letting his clothing drop and set his knees wide and close to the edge the edge of the mattress set on the floor. His elbows folded under his chin and left his hind end propped up directly at the alpha. 

"Can't even wait to take your boots off?" Joe said, unable to tear his gaze off of the small pink hole Nicky had put on display. Nicky made an impatient noise. "Alright!" Joe capitulated easily and undressed completely. 

Joe knelt behind him in the bracket of Nicolò's legs. He couldn't resist smoothing his palms over the expanse of Nicky's pale skin, unmarred flesh clinging over the muscle and bone that his lover inhabited and put to use with beautiful skill and determination. 

"I can hear you thinking. As much as I enjoy your intellect, your brain isn't the organ I require you to use at this moment," Nicky said dryly. 

His words were met with a playful slap on his backside. "As your form inspires lust in my body, it evokes poetry in my soul." 

Nicky passed him a plastic bottle. "As long as you put your lustful body to use, your soul can do whatever it wants." 

"My soul shall never wander far from yours," Joe said, like a promise, but he followed orders and slicked himself up. 

Nicky made a long, low sound as Joe pushed inside and his fingers curled and clawed at the bedsheets as he arched his back. "Give it to me hard and fast." 

In the other room Nile dropped her book to exchange a look with Booker. _Again?_ Her eyebrows complained. 

"Alphas and omegas," he said with a shrug. "It's something with their hormones. Like they're almost always set on 'fight or fuck' mode. I guess individuals' pheromones trigger one or the other? Obviously Nick and Joe's are stuck permanently on fuck. Which is better than Andy and Quynh's, which changes on a damn hourly basis, I swear." 

* * *

After they've both come, Joe took his usual place curled up behind Nicky. The arm under the Genovan's neck was bent up and clasped his hand with both of Nicky's, and the other one ran up and down his body. 

"I swear that I have felt your soul before," Nicolò confessed quietly. His anxiety was eased when Joe just kissed him on the back of his neck and listened. "Nine hundred years is a long fucking time. There were years where I tried to drown myself in others' blood, angry at the universe for what it did to me. Unable to die. Trying to lose myself in madness. There was always something holding me back; something good and warm and hopeful. It couldn't have been any part of me- not in those dark times. Maybe it was a connection to you." 

"Whatever you have done has led to this moment. I regret your pain, but I believe that everything we have both suffered has been to get us here." 

* * *

"There's a job," Booker said over dinner. "Kidnapped girls. South Sudan." 

"Who's the contact?" Andy said. 

"Copley." 

"No repeats," she said. 

Nile looked around the table. "What does that mean?" 

Joe set his fork down. "We take jobs, but never from the same people more than once. To protect our secret." He makes sure that both Nile and Nicky understand. 

Nick has that almost blank look on his face that means he is processing information for a second but then he blinks and nods. "Smart policy," he says. 

Quynh has a soft spot for children. Or, rather, a mean streak against adults who abuse them. "Boko Haram?" 

Booker's shrug was more of a gesture with his arms than his shoulders. "I don't know if anyone has taken credit for it," Booker said. 

"A little out of their area," Nick said neutrally. "The farthest east they've gotten that I heard was into Chad." 

"Who's Copley?" Nile asked. 

"CIA," Andy said. 

"Ex-CIA," Booker corrected. "He's living in London." 

"There's money in it for us, right? Where would that be coming from?" Nile asked, earning a dismissive look from Booker. She was not going to be dismissed. "I would hope you guys care about who is paying you and how they got that money. Since you say you're trying to be the 'good guys.'" She added. 

"Doesn't matter. We're not taking the job," Andy reiterated. 

"Does it matter _who_ pays us if we save children?" Quynh argues. 

Nile's jaw is set firm. "Taking money from anyone means you're linking yourselves to them. Legitimizing their organization and its goals. Condoning whatever shit they do." 

"We're untraceable," Quynh said, her voice getting a fraction louder. "Why not take money from so-called illegitimate groups? Means they'll have less cash for their own corrupt interests." 

"That's part of the problem with capitalism!" Nile said, standing up. "I thought you were idealists," she said accusingly. 

The bitter, almost condescending laugh was from Andy. "We're too old to be idealists, Nile. You'll learn. Everything in this world is a goddamn compromise." 

Nile turned her glare on Joe. "Do you have an opinion?" 

"I agree with you. But she's the Boss," he said. "If it's a decision between staying back because of a moral stance and following my family into a fight to protect them, I will choose my family. I can get over the stain of dirty money better than the pain and guilt of losing any of us." He gave a significant look to Quynh whose anger disappeared entirely in favor of something softer. 

Joe turning to Quynh led to Andy and Booker's physical and emotional postures downshifting from the tension that had sprung up. Nick and Nile shared a glance that informed each other that they were both out of the loop. 

"It would be a bad idea to take a job so soon anyway, if you are hoping for either Nile or I to join you," Nick said before he resumed eating. 

"I want to hear more," Quynh said to Booker. 

"Quynh," Andy said with a sigh. 

"I've taken jobs without you before," she said. "Book, we can discuss this after dinner." 

* * *

Nick excused himself from the team's renewed debate after the table was cleared and dishes put away. He went outside and listened to the planes pass overhead and smoked alone until Nile sat next to him. 

"Got another one?" He tipped the carton and she took one and lit it using the lighter he had left on the ground next to him. "I stopped smoking before boot camp. Don't think it's going to do much damage to me now," Nile added dryly. 

"Other people might complain about the smell," Nick said. 

"Like Joe?" She said teasingly. After a minute she asked, "You two are pretty intense. And it's been, what, less than two weeks?" 

Nick huffed half a chuckle and repositioned the cigarette in his fingers. "Alphas... that's just what it's like with them. I had almost forgotten." 

"How long had it been?" 

"Don't look sorry for me; it's not like I've been abstinent for three hundred years or whatever. I've picked up guys. It's just... fat-free, sugar-free, unfulfilling fucking if it's not with an alpha." 

"Now I feel even more sorry for you," Nile said. "That's worse than not getting any." 

"I thought Americans had a saying about that. Bad sex and bad pizza?" 

"I'm pretty sure that is more of a dumb joke than a cultural pearl of wisdom. So do you go around the world trying to 'do good' like they say they do?" 

Nick had to wait for the rumble of a plane to die down before he could answer. "I've been mostly specializing in information and intelligence acquisition these days. Less wetwork." He pointed a thumb back at the house. "They caught me in Myanmar, stealing intel on the government's actions. Doing a bit of electronic sabotage to cover my tracks. Sent the data to some journalists and foreign committees. See if that puts more pressure on shutting down the whole pogrom than just me gunning my way through soldiers like Rambo. Any thought about how you'll be using your new talent to help the world?" 

"I've actually thought about that," Nile said. She wasn't as much smoking her cigarette as fiddling around with it. "I have two friends who were killed back home. There's at least one serial killer, but a lot of victims. Like, more than 50. I was thinking about going back, acting as bait, then fucking up the bastard once he tried something." 

"You're not a superhero," Nick said gently. "We're still vulnerable. Can get tied up, beaten, tortured, raped, and killed and just wake up to experience it all again. My advice is to break everything down like a mission: infil and exfil plans, control the location as much as possible, contingency plans and back-up, and a solid set of sensible objectives. Do you want revenge, or do you want the killer subdued and handed over for justice to the legal system? Your friends weren't the only victims; there are other families that need closure, too. Can you force him into making a confession? Revealing how he caught them, the locations of the bodies? Are you willing to withstand whatever he has the chance and desire to do to you if the only way to get him to drop his guard is for him to think that you are dead?" 

Nile looked thoughtful and a little queasy. Nick patted her shoulder. "You've seen how Quynh fights and how I do. Are you the type who doesn't mind pain to achieve your goal, or do you want to avoid it altogether? Or somewhere in the middle, like Andy and Joe? It will take time for you to figure out." He stubbed out the butt of his cigarette on the stone then stood up. "All we have is time, after all. Everything else comes and goes." 

* * *

"We're going to London," Andy said the next day. "I agreed to meet with Copley and hear him out." 

"I'm not going," Nile said stubbornly. 

"I'm not part of your team," Nick added. "Nile and I can stick together until you four decide what to do. I'm not part of your team _yet_ ," he corrected himself at Joe's pout, smiling and shaking his head. "But no promises." 

"Of course not," Joe said smugly. 

Andy, Quynh, Joe, and Booker took off soon after breakfast. Nile could hear the car drive off in a moment between planes and looked at Nick. 

"Of course we're going to back them up," he said, tossing the keys to her. "Fifteen minute head start. You drive. They're taking Eurostar, I've got us a plane. I cloned Booker's phone, but no guarantees for when he'll figure that out." 

Nick had researched this Copley guy. For someone no longer working for the company, he was certainly keeping his eye on the global newsfeed. He looked up the man's recent finances and found out that he had taken a nice sum from a subsidiary of a major pharmaceutical corporation. 

"Retired CIA," he said to Nile as they approached the airport. "Quit when his wife was dying of a terminal illness. Still poking around on the dark web. Got a few thousand pounds from Merrick Corp and is contacting Booker for a do-good rescue op of children in the middle of Africa." 

Nile shook her head. "Smells funny." 

"Smells like a goddamn trap. If Booker was good enough to pin me down, why is he pushing this mission on the team?" 

"Compromised?" 

Nick shrugged. "They're his family. Seems genuine. Don't know him well enough to understand what weaknesses he has that could be exploited." 

"You cloned his phone. What does he have from this Copley guy?" 

"The only direct message was an email offering this job. But... let me see if he has any..." Nick trailed off as he tapped and swiped. "...No. You want to go left at the next exit." 

"Thought we were going to the airport?" 

"You need some documents first. I contacted a guy. He thinks I'm an Australian named Robert so don't act surprised." 

* * *

Joe and Quynh watched the meeting from a distance, Joe practically vibrating with impatience until Andy and Booker cleared the meeting area. After checking in by phone, Quynh rolled her eyes. "Your watch has ended. Go ahead and check in with your new boyfriend. I'll be with the others doing some planning." 

After she left the hotel room to meet up with Andy and Booker at another hotel, Joe turned his phone on and called Nicky. 

"Miss me already?" 

"Like the-" 

Nile interrupted him.."You're on speaker, so keep it decent. I'm young and relatively innocent." 

This wasn't exactly what Joe had hoped for, but he could adapt. "What are you two doing?" 

"I introduced Nile to a forger and we got her her first fake identity," Nick said. 

"Naomi," Nile said. "I have never looked like a Naomi in my life!" 

"We're going to work on her Nigerian accent. By watching a lot of TV." 

"By TV he means news clips. Nothing anyone wants to binge watch. I thought doing spy shit would be more fun." 

Joe smiled. "Every job has its moments of tedium." He could hear a disgusted "Ugh" from Nile then her voice trailing off. "Are we finally alone?" 

"I am. Don't know about you." Nicky had switched from speakerphone because his voice was warm and teasing and felt like it was curling into Joe's ear. 

"Got a hotel room to myself," Joe said. "Where are you?" 

"Not in Goussainville any more. Nile and I went someplace else. We'll meet up when you and the others are done. In the meantime I'm now alone with the door closed." 

Joe rubbed his lower belly with his free hand, cupped his palm over his right then left hipbones and then slipped his fingertips under his clothing to stroke through his pubic hair. "I miss you," he said. 

"Sappy alpha," Nicky said, not sounding displeased about it at all. "We woke up in the same bed only this morning." 

"But I think about the days that stretch ahead without the pleasure of your presence...." He couldn't resist the temptation anymore and took himself properly in hand, groaning at the feeling. 

"Sounds like you don't exactly need me there for your pleasure." 

"Need your voice in my head to make it anything remotely satisfying." 

"If you haven't perfected the art of masturbation in over 900 years, Joe, I'm not sure anyone can help you." 

"That's not the type of teasing I was hoping to hear from you," Joe said with fake disappointment. 

"I've never done this before. Over the phone." Nick chuckled. "My last real relationship was before phones were even invented." 

"Well at least we have the opportunity now. Telegraph never did it for me." 

Nicky's chuckle turned into a full-bodied laugh. "Instructions for operations colon grasp handle stop manipulate top stroke shaft stop repeat until finished full stop success query." 

"Exactly! All that stopping messes with my rhythm!" 

After their chortles died down Nicky was the first to speak again. "Just the sound of your voice makes me wet." 

Joe groaned and gripped the base of his dick. "Your cock or your ass?" 

"Both." 

Joe had let go of his phone so he could cup his bollocks with his other hand. He pressed his ear against the glass and plastic propped on the pillow. "I love the way you taste, _hayati._ " 

He could hear a pop as Nicky presumably pulled a finger from his mouth. "The taste doesn't do much for me." 

Heat and urgency coalesced in Joe's core and he started moving both of his hands. "I miss your taste and smell." 

"I'm trying to imagine it's the head of your cock I can see in the circle of my fist. Fuck, definitely not even close to doing this for real." 

"Still better than doing this alone. I love hearing the stutter of your breath. The small gasps." 

"Joe, are you close?" 

"Tell me to come." 

"Come, baby." 

They both groaned and panted through their orgasms, Nicky stretching and humming afterward like a cat might purr. 

"You and the rest are safe?" Nicky finally asked after a couple of minutes. "This job. Seems to be legit?" 

"Andy is still cranky about doing a 'repeat,'" Joe admitted. 

"I haven't seen anything in the news about missing girls in South Sudan." 

"You know intelligence can keep these things under wraps," Joe said. 

"But the families," Nick persisted. "Sixty sets of parents and siblings and grandparents all following a gag order when their children have been kidnapped?" 

"I agree it's unusual, but not out of the realm of possibility." 

"You trust Booker?" 

Joe sat up and pressed the phone to his ear. "Of course I do! I've known him for two hundred years! Was there with Andy and Quynh when we found him!" 

"There isn't any weakness this Copley could exploit? If this is the first time he has even mentioned working with an outsider twice, why would he be so insistent about it?" 

"He says he keeps lines of communication with former contractors open. We get requests from repeats a lot. He only mentioned this one because Quynh has a thing for protecting children," Joe said. 

"And Andy finds it hard to refuse Quynh," Nick said. "Doesn't it seem a bit suspicious?" 

"Look, if it'll ease your mind, I'll keep you updated on our plans." 

"It would ease my mind," Nicky said with genuine relief. "Keep me updated. Does Copley know there are more of us then the four of you?" 

"I don't think so. I overheard the conversation when Andy and Booker made contact and it wasn't mentioned." 

"Good. If shit goes down, Nile and I have a better chance of rescuing you if they don't expect any back up." 

Joe felt a throb of sympathy for Nicolò: how long those centuries must have been without anyone to rely on. "They're my family, habibi. Them and you and now Nile. I trust them." 

Nicky's voice softened. "I know. But don't trust Copley. And don't trust anyone in your family who takes the side of an outsider over the well-being of the rest of your family." 

"I promise I'll be careful, Nicky. I'll keep you in the loop." 

"Don't tell the others that you're passing on intel. Well, not Booker at least. Please? I just have a bad feeling about this job." 

"Everything will be fine. I promise," Joe swore.

* * *

The second they realized that they had walked into an ambush was the moment that Joe realized that everything was not fine. They died, came back to life, slaughtered the mercenary crew, and all four of them realized the shit they were in when Andy pointed out the cameras. 

After they had trudged to a ditch and Booker was digging a hole to stash everything they could leave behind, Joe pulled Andy away. He had his phone, still turned off, in his hand. "I need to warn Nicky and Nile," he said. 

She hesitated then nodded. "No details, Joe. We're going to keep our heads down until we reconvene somewhere. We can't be sure either of them weren't involved." She stood there, arms crossed, making it clear that she wasn't going to give him privacy for the call. 

"Yes?" When Nicky's bland answering tone reached Joe's ear he could have wept with relief. He had pictured another black ops team gunning down his lover. 

"It was a set-up," Joe croaked out. _You were right,_ he couldn't say with Andy right there. 

Nicky swore in two- no, four languages. It made him crack a small smile. "The four of you are okay?" 

"We're fine. They ambushed us, killed all of us. We came back and took out everyone. But there were cameras." 

More cursing. "You guys going after Copley?" 

"I don't know yet. We're gonna be out of contact. Snapping our SIM cards and leaving them here." 

"Joe. Was there more than one camera? Even if the enemy had them on their helmets or vests?" 

"There were... four cameras? At least?" Andy nodded, her brow wrinkled as she also tried to puzzle out Nicky's concern. 

"One camera would make sure the job was done," Nick said. "But that many means someone wanted a good view of the action. Someone expected something unusual to happen. If it's Copley, I doubt he would go through this much trouble just to kill you guys because he was afraid you knew too much. He wants proof of what we can do to show other people." 

Joe rubbed at the sweat dripping down his forehead and met Andy's eyes. "Copley wanted proof that we couldn't die. Video proof, to show someone else. _Shit._ " 

"We don't know how much Booker is involved-" 

"Nicky, no, I told you-" 

"He's Copley's contact," Nick insisted. "I'm not saying he did anything for sure, but be careful. In case you need it, I found his current BOO. If I give you the location, will you remember it? It took a bit of doing to uncover it, so if Booker just gives it to you like Copley was easy to find, don't trust him." 

Joe was finding Nicky's persistence on Booker being dirty depressing, but he kept that to himself and memorized the information Nick relayed. 

"Be careful, Joe," Nicky finally said, the urgency of the entire conversation still in his voice but now joined by a heart-wrenching vulnerability. 

Joe had to turn away from Andy to wipe his eyes. It wasn't the bright sun making them water. "You too, love. Keep Nile safe." 

"She's strong. We've got each other's backs," Nicky said. 

He hung up and handed his phone to Andy who had a sympathetic expression before she led him over to the pit with Quynh and Booker and dismantled the phone, dropping the pieces in with their bloody clothes and guns. When she snapped the small wafer of the SIM and let the parts fall, Joe held his breath and tried to remind himself that it wasn't as if his entire connection to Nicky was being severed along with that bit of plastic. 

* * *

Their Safehouse Delta in Madrid was raided. Joe and Quynh found themselves chained and in a van with a squad of more mercenaries when they revived. Neither of them responded to the taunts or threats of their captors, gathering all the information they could and refusing to give any. 

It wasn't a military or paramilitary organization in charge of the operation, but a pharmaceutical company. Quynh kept more stoic than Joe, and he wasn't sure if her harsher experiences of torture made it more or less terrifying for her. Her eyes and face stayed neutral as stone as she was strapped down while Joe had to be killed to make him stop fighting long enough to be put into position. 

The only good thoughts Joe could hold on to was that it was only him and Quynh here; the others had to be safe. 

* * *

Andy and Booker were dragged in a day or two later. "She's not healing!" Joe heard and he turned his head and tried to process the sudden rush of people and movement. 

"I killed her," Booker said, not fighting as he was dragged over to another bed and tied into place. 

The firm line of Andy's jaw and the pain in her eyes wasn't entirely due to her unhealing wounds. Joe tuned out Quynh's panicked questions and Andy's tired responses and he focused on Booker. His brother's guilty conscious is written all over his face. 

"You actually sold us out," Joe said, the truth dawning. 

Quynh screamed at Booker from Joe's other side, no doubt fighting her restraints in rage. 

"What do you know of the weight of all those years alone?" Booker said. 

"You're a very pathetic man, Sebastien." _Nicky had more than four times that time by himself,_ Joe wanted to say, but he wouldn't let that name pass his lips here. "You had us the whole goddamn time." 

"All I had was my grief." 

Beyond all of his anger, Joe knew only vaguely that there was hurt from those words. "Now you'll just have more," he said. He let his eyes move past Booker to watch the activity taking place around Andy as white coats tended her wounds and Merrick and one of the armed men discussed how Andromache the fucking Scythian was apparently now mortal. 

He turned to get Quynh's attention. "Stop screaming, chị. Shh, shh." She abruptly clamped her mouth shut, her dark eyes gleaming with tears. "This is not the end," he promised. He had only seen her like this, wide-eyed and incoherent, one time, when they had finally pulled her from the cold ocean. 

"So Andy, what took you so long?" Joe said eventually after things had calmed down and the space wasn't bustling with people stealing parts of their bodies. 

"I demanded to see Copley, and Book and I stopped by for a visit." She looked past Booker to give Joe a significant look. "Didn't take him long to pinpoint the spook's location, just like your friend had said. So my guard was up, but I was at a disadvantage since I stopped healing the night we were ambushed." 

"Wait, what?" Booker said. 

"He tipped me off that you might be selling us out," Joe said to Booker. He felt his mouth twist into a scowl. "I kept defending you, didn't believe him, but he was fucking right." 

Booker shook his head, looking uncomfortable and almost stricken, then turned back to Andy. "You knew you had stopped healing in Spain? Why didn't you tell me?" 

"Joe had told me that you might be working with Copley against us. I didn't think it was likely, but I decided to play things close to the vest. Would it have changed your mind? Could you have stopped what you had started, Book?" Andy's accusation was tired and flat. 

"I didn't think it would be like this," Booker said, defeated. "I don't think Copley thought it would be like this." 

"Because midnight abductions by paramilitary SWAT units always lead to picnics and parades, you stupid bastard," Joe said, before turning his face away from Booker and closing his eyes. 

* * *

Instead of the hope and accomplishment he had expected, James returned home feeling hollow and used. He had been blind and manipulated. He locked the door and staggered into the kitchen and pulled out a bottle of Hennessy from the cabinet and set it on the table along with a glass before collapsing into a chair and resting his face in his hands. 

"Guilty conscious, huh?" 

The voice surprised him, but he was too depressed to startle or scramble for a weapon. He lifted his head so he could see the unfamiliar young woman with a pistol saunter into the room and pick up the bottle to casually examine the label. 

"Who are you?" James asked. 

She set the bottle back on the table and leveled her gun at him, ready to fire. "I'm here to learn what you did to Andy. I'm gonna get that information and then leave you here, alive or dead: your choice." 

Who the hell was she, walking in here so confidently? Only one thing made sense. "You're another one," James said. 

"Yeah. I'm new. I'd appreciate getting my mentor back so I can learn what the hell has happened to me. Where is Andy?" 

"Merrick Pharmaceuticals," James said. "They're in a lab, being tested. All four of them." 

"Tortured," she corrected, with a pitiless glare. 

"Tortured," he agreed, too tired and betrayed and guilty to argue. "Merrick only cares about her immortality, not what she's done with it. I thought I had convinced him, but...." 

"How did you get Booker to work with you?" 

James glanced away from the gun and looked longingly at the cognac before meeting the woman's gaze. "I thought we could end disease. End suffering." She huffed dismissively, and that sparked a kernel of anger. "My wife died of ALS! Booker lost his family! If whatever secrets you have can be unlocked, think of what we can do with it!" 

"Yeah, the Illuminati of rich white men suddenly having the power of choosing who can never be killed. Sounds like paradise," she said sarcastically. "Did you really think someone like Merrick would be all about fairness and equality?" Her attention wavered, her eyes flickering to the left like she was getting info from an earwig. "What do you mean by 'what she's done with it?'" She asked James. 

James put his hands up and tentatively stood. "I'll show you. Only if you feel like whoever is listening in also has Andy's best interest in mind." 

She scoffed. "You've proven your allegiance. I trust my partner more than I trust you." 

"How many of you are there?" James asked as he turned around to head to the stairs. 

"We are legion," she said, her tone giving no clue as to whether she was kidding or not. 

* * *

The gunshots were as welcome to Joe as any sound had been in his life. He gave Quynh a smile and a wink. "Sounds like back-up's here." 

It didn't take long at all before Nicky and Nile were both bursting into the room. With several precise shots they took out Merrick's people, then Nile was working on freeing Andy and Nicky was soon close enough to lure into a quick kiss. "Sorry it took us so long," Nicky said. 

When Joe's first hand was freed, he pulled Nicky by his shirt into a more satisfying kiss. "Damn it, Joe- stop distracting me!" Nicky laughed as he pulled away. 

"Nice to see you," Joe said, "At last my saviour arrives!" 

"Don't forget about me," Nile said, giving him a fake look of hurt as she walked past him to unbuckle Quynh. 

"Nile could have staged the rescue by herself," Nick said, pulling Joe upright with a hand and passing him his AR. 

When he reached for the straps restraining Booker the man said, "No, just leave me here." 

"No man left behind," Nile said. 

"There's always a first time," Joe muttered. 

Quynh practically flew over to Andy and embraced her protectively while she scowled at Booker. "Traitor!" 

"Stop," Andy said. "This is not the time for it. We're all leaving together." 

"You're going to man up and make sure your family gets out of here safe," Nick told Booker as he worked on getting him loose. "Especially Andy." The blond man gave him a wary nod then froze as Nick closed in and pinned him into place with the intensity of his eyes. _"Your family,"_ he repeated firmly. "You've had them for two hundred years and decided that they weren't shit compared to whoever you lost. I've known them two weeks and am cleaning up your mess. After nine hundred years of truly being alone, take it from me when I tell you don't throw them away. And do whatever you have to so they won't throw you away after this." 

Nick pulled away and went into a strategic huddle with Andy, Nile, and Quynh, leaving Booker standing on shaking legs until he staggered to a fallen guard and armed himself. 

Getting out seemed like it was going to be easy until they encountered Merrick's top goon. Nick and Joe practically shoved the others out the door when the gas began to fog up the room. The man they stood against was well-trained and at the top of his game; he also amassed more muscle than either of them. 

It was a tag-team effort, but Joe finally delivered the coup de grâce then scrambled over to Nicky who lay with the top of his skull shattered from a bullet's exit wound. It was too much to bear to see Nicky dead and unmoving and that frightening, devastating pain that Joe had only previewed in the South Sudan desert while his only lifeline to him had been destroyed had not prepared him for the grief and agony of the thought that _Nicky was no longer there._ It felt like an eternity as Joe prayed before he heard Nicky inhale a shaky breath. They gripped each other's arms and stared as Nicky came back to himself and the present. 

Nick, used to necessarily quick recoveries in action, got to his feet before Joe even remembered that he had knees and was brushing out chips of bone from his hair with one hand even as he reached for a rifle with the other. He wiped his bloody hand on his trouser leg before he grabbed Joe's hand. "I'm fine, we gotta finish this." 

Joe did the rest of the fight in a daze, even a spectacular encore of a rooftop incursion that he had first improvised when Booker was new. Finally Merrick was dead, they were all on solid ground (having arrived there in one way or another), and Andy seemed to still be in one piece and in a veritably upbeat mood and giving Nile proud looks as the young woman caught her up on what she and Nicky had been up to. 

Booker was silent and withdrawn while Nick paced alongside him, his eyes warily peering around still on guard for threats, noting all the CCTV cameras recording footage he would have to sabotage and muttering about how he hated London. 

Quynh and Joe shambled behind, clutching each other's hands, both feeling wrung out and shell-shocked with so much to process. Booker's betrayal. Andy _not healing._ Joe switched his hold on Quynh's left hand to his left one so he could sling his right arm over her shoulders and pull her closer. He had just found Nicky and was still lost in that newfound emotional territory; how the hell could Quynh manage to cope with a history with Andy spanning millennia that was suddenly looming with an impending expiration date? 

Nile led them to a utility van she had the keys for that had been parked behind the Merrick building. Nick took the driver's seat and handed her the pistol he had tucked into his waistband. "You're still wobbly," he said. "My nerves couldn't take that along with your usual driving." 

"It's the fucking wrong side of the road," Nile clapped back, though she couldn't hide her smile. 

"Now say that with a Nigerian accent, Naomi," Nicky said before he started the van and adjusted the seat and mirrors before pulling out. 

There weren't any seats in the back, but whatever had been in the vehicle had been pulled out. Joe, Andy, Quynh, and Booker sprawled on the floor, backs against the walls, the women huddled together. Joe set his back in the corner of the rear hatch and the passenger side so he could get a partial view of Nicky's face as he drove. 

"Ah, I don't know, Nicky... maybe you should fuck off instead," Nile said, falsely cheerful in a clipped, musical tone. 

Joe laughed the loudest, finally losing the last of the paralyzed feeling of the pensive fear of that laboratory. "Definitely a quick study," he said about Nile. 

"You're lucky that I'm a teacher who will grade you despite the profanity," Nicky said. "I give that a 78%." 

They pulled into a car park with a garage and Nicky told them to stay in the van as he ducked out and returned to hand out towels and bottles of water. "There are new shirts in the other car, so at least get your top halves presentable." 

When the six immortals transferred into a late-model Ford sedan, leaving the bloodied rags in the van, they looked almost respectable except for the three women and Joe crammed into the back seat. 

"Where are we headed?" Andy asked. 

"I have a place in Croydon," Nicky said.


	4. Chapter 4

Nicky's place in Croydon was a 5-bedroom semi-detached house. Nicky entered the code for the lockbox on the door to get the key. "I get it cleaned and rent it on AirBnB," he explained, as he let them in. "Have a lot of properties I do that with. Doesn't get the neighbours as curious as just keeping it vacant would." 

It was a nice place: suburban family decor and a crate of children's toys on the living room floor making it seem like an unlikely place to shelter immortal mercenaries. They all dispersed to the kitchen or washrooms. Joe trailed behind Nicky as he went straight to the master suite and had barely shut the door before Nicky had whirled around and caught him up in a hug. 

When Joe's fingers automatically threaded into Nicky's hair he was reminded of watching that asshole blow out his lover's brains, and he had to squeeze his eyes shut against tears as he buried his face against Nicky's shoulder. 

"I've gotta contact Copley," Nicky said, gently trying to pull away. 

Joe's response was muffled. "Why?" 

"We guilted him into cleaning up our escape. Give me a few minutes." 

Joe reluctantly released him and watched as Nicky tapped briefly at his phone before setting it next to him as he sat on the bed and started working at the double knots on his bootlaces. 

" This is James." 

Nick calmly related camera locations as well as the site of the van they had used to escape. "...And if I find out that any of that blood has made its way into another fucking lab, we will have our first face-to-face meeting. I promise you that is not how you want our introduction to go," he added nastily, keeping up an Australian act. 

"I understand. I will keep my word." 

"What was that?" Joe said after the call ended and Nicky was flexing his bare toes in the carpet. 

Nicky flashed a smile. "Nile was the one to infiltrate his house and make contact. I'm one of her 'legion' of other immortal assassins." He chuckled. "He thought there were four of you but now he doesn't know, so he acts like there's a damn invisible army of us breathing down his neck. Nile's going to make sure he follows orders, but I wanted to mess with him a little." A dark look crossed his face. "You and Andy and Quynh are going to have to visit his house for a little chat. He's pieced together an impressive account of your history." 

Joe was almost distracted by this information but then Nicky stood up and dropped his trousers. "Join me in the shower?" 

They had showered together enough that there was a routine: a bit of groping and soaping; taking turns under the spray to rinse off and out of the water to shampoo; mostly taking care of their own pits, cracks, and balls. Today Joe was too impatient to limit himself. He let Nicky start off alone in the shower cubicle just long enough for Joe to piss before he joined him and pressed him against the wall with his hands on his shoulders. Nicky's smile was encouraging, so Joe took that as permission to do his best to pull the Genovan into his own body, devouring Nicky's mouth and letting his hands run over water-slick hair and skin with little thought for tenderness. 

"Never go where I can't follow," Nicky said into Joe's ear, something vulnerable and afraid in his voice even as his fingertips dug into Joe's ass. 

"Never leave me behind," Joe practically begged in a similar tone. 

There was a shift in Nicky's expression as he brought a hand up to cradle Joe's face. "Did you think I would just leave you there?" 

"Not for a minute," Joe practically growled, not willing to confess that his faith had shaken while he and Quynh had watched each other get punctured and biopsied and sliced. When Booker and Andy had been hauled in, neither of them fighting their captors, his heart had practically stopped beating with the fear that no one would find them. 

"I would dismantle regimes to see you freed," Nicky said, slipping into his native tongue, his eyes more blue than green as he made the promise vehemently, practically glaring at Joe to believe. "A fucking corporation was nothing." 

"My angel of vengeance," Joe said, pressing his forehead against Nicolò's. "My indomitable omega." 

"I would rise from every death just to see your face. Take every bullet meant to harm you and spit it back at our enemies." 

Needing to wind Nicky back down, Joe started soothing him with kisses and gentle caresses. "We're safe, bellissimo." He wrapped himself around Nicky and kept crooning endearments and sweet little nothings until the man stopped trembling with fury. He turned the water off and shuffled them out of the shower and dried them both off haphazardly as Nicky clung to him. 

"Hayati. What do you need?" 

"Knot me. Tie us together." Nicky pulled away just enough to lead them to the bed. He settled on his back and tugged Joe into position over him. 

Joe hadn't popped a knot since Nicky's heat ended. It would require a large influx of pheromones from his partner, but Nicky was producing them like crazy now; after all the fighting hormones from their life-and-death adventure had had time to subside, their bodies demanded an animalistic renewal of their connection. Joe nosed over Nicky's neck then into his armpits and then down to his groin, where he took the time to put his mouth and hands to use. By the time three of his fingers were able to pump in and out of Nicky's hole with the passage well eased with slick, Joe was on the verge of insanity with his lust. He unfolded himself so he could look into Nicky's eyes before he thrust his cock inside. 

Nicky pressed his heels and shoulders into the bed and ground his dick against Joe's muscled body, burying his hand in Joe's springy hair and baring his teeth even as Joe tried to kiss his lips. The alpha just moved his attention to Nicolò's cheek and then back down to his neck as Nicky tried to get Joe as deep inside of him as he could go. 

* * *

Nile brought the new laptop Nicky had set up for her into the kitchen after showering and changing her clothes. Booker was there, staring morosely into a mug of tea with the wistful/annoyed look of an alcoholic in a house without booze. 

"I'm supposed to check up on Copley and make sure he's 'cleaning up' after us," she said as the computer was booting up. "Nicky said he'd probably be busy, but that you could show me how." 

Booker snorted at the word "busy." "You met Copley?" He pulled the laptop closer and swiveled it so he could see the screen. Nile settled into the chair next to him after picking out an apple from a bowl on a counter. 

"Snuck into his house when he returned after dropping you and Andy off. Scared the shit out of him and made him agree to help us get you all out and hide our tracks. Wasn't hard to convince him." 

Booker used the trackpad to look through the applications Nick had loaded and accessed the tracking on the mobile Nile had given to Copley. Identifying his location on a map, Booker used the log in info Nick had saved to access the live feeds of a private surveillance company that had its cameras installed in the garage where they had changed vehicles. The van they had used was parked just out of frame from the one camera that had a view of the section (Booker admired Nick's fastidious attention to detail!), but they could only catch the occasional flash of dark fabric or the opening of a door before Copley had finished whatever inspection he was doing of the van and drove it out. 

Nile asked Booker to freeze a frame of the feed so she could check her phone and decipher the number plates to make sure Copley had switched them as directed. 

"I didn't think we would be lab rats," Booker finally confessed as they watched the dot of Copley's burner phone travel through a map of the city. 

Nile made an unflattering sound. "Either you're lying or all that alcohol kills off brain cells even in people like us." 

Booker sighed but didn't try to defend himself again. 

"I know I'm new and know fuck-all about you guys, but clearly there are issues. Copley was all, 'Booker and I wanted to save people from suffering' but I don't exactly get that philanthropic vibe from you." 

"Yeah, well, I was just hoping someone would find a way to undo it." 

Nile gave him a look with a bit of understanding though her mouth was pursed tightly. "I'm hoping that I will die sometime before the eventual heat death of the universe, but I'm not willing to sacrifice unwilling people for that cause. You led your goddamn family blindly into the hands of a bunch of sadistic scientists, man. I've gotta think you hate them at least a little bit." 

Booker's tea is less than lukewarm at this point, but he sips some anyway to ease the sudden dryness of his mouth. "I had a wife and sons. Suddenly I was _like this._ I had to watch them die, one by one, and they all envied and hated me for this fucking 'gift' that I had gotten without being asked and that I couldn't share with any of them. My last son died from cancer and he shouted me away from his bedside. You have a family? The same thing is gonna happen to you." 

"Sure. That sucks. But so does everything else that you can't control in life," Nile said. "I'm sure you were upset when your son got cancer. It was God's will, fate, or just a random mutation that no one had any control over. You've had time to process it so that you aren't still ranting about how the universe fucked him over. We've got our own fucking cancer, I guess. I'm pissed off and having trouble dealing with it and wish that I had a goddamn choice, but I figure I will get over it sometime because I'm a grown-ass woman. I don't see myself still stomping my feet over something I can't change in two hundred years. I definitely don't see myself throwing my allies under the bus for some promise from a cocky, entitled snakeoil salesman like Merrick. All I know is who I am and where I came from, and I am going to do my best to stay true to that and handle the rest. Even if it means that everyone that I know and love now is going to die." 

Hardly enough time passed for Nile's little speech to sink in before another voice said, "Women mature so much faster than men." Quynh sidled in to open the fridge and eye the contents. 

Andy came close behind her and leaned back against the counter with her arms crossed. "She may be new, but she speaks some truth," she said, her sharp gaze taking in Nile and Booker. 

"There are _eighteen_ boxes of curry in here," Quynh said, her head practically inside of a cupboard. She started ranting about colonialism and English culinary traditions, and slammed things around as she filled a large pot with water and put jars of tomato sauce on the counter and ransacked the drawers of utensils. The rest of them let her, hoping she would burn off some of her seething emotions. Nile asked Booker questions about hacking and covering their tracks while Andy watched everything going on around her with a mix of relief and affection, even as she tried to ignore the tidal wave of negative emotions she could feel surging at the edges of her mind. 

Joe and Nick eventually came in when Quynh was heating the sauce in the microwave and the others were bravely gritting their teeth and pretending the ominous pops coming from inside the machine were _fine_ because no one wanted to criticize the angry cook. Joe managed to step in to save their meal without ruffling Quynh's feathers too badly while Nicky took a bottle of juice from the fridge and leaned over Booker and Nile's shoulders to check on Copley's progress. 

While they ate, Nile and Nicky gave an account of their meeting with Copley and what he had done to try to erase the evidence of their presence at the Merrick building and escape afterward. 

"He could continue to be an asset," Nicky said. "With what he knows, we should keep him or kill him." 

"He's got walls of your histories," Nile added. " _Disgraced TV detective obsessed with hunting down a serial killer and bringing him to justice because of a personal vendetta_ style. It's epic but disturbing." 

"Book and I got a glimpse," Andy said dryly. "We're going to go and have another chat with Copley, and then Quynh and I are going to go back east for awhile." She caught the tension that stiffened Booker and met Joe's sad look. "Only for a year or so. I'm not going to wither overnight." 

"I'll keep her safe," Quynh said stubbornly in Vietnamese. 

Joe laced his fingers together and put them behind his head as he leaned back in his chair. "I'm sure Andy will hardly have a minute alone to get into mischief," he said archly with a smile bordering on a leer. "Just keep the sharp things out of the bedroom from now on." 

"You know that's half the fun," Andy said dryly, fending off her lover's playful slap. 

* * *

Joe, Andy, and Nile took a day trip to visit Copley. They gave him a 20-minute heads up before they knocked on his door. His first words were an apology to Joe and, particularly, to Andy. 

"We're here to see everything you collected on us," Joe said. 

Copley led them up the stairs. "I am rather surprised it is just the three of you." 

"Booker must have seen all this before," Nile said, in an unfriendly tone, "And Quynh has been listing the ways she wants to torture you before you die unpleasantly. Everyone else isn't directly involved." 

"The man I spoke to on the phone?" Copley didn't try to disguise his curiosity. The three of them all got looks of dark amusement on their faces even though they weren't looking at one another. It prickled at Copley's nerves and his professional pride that he had no hint of the sixth immortal's identity, nor knew if there were even more. 

"He's listening in right now," Joe said, with a shark's smile. 

"We also have eyes on the house," Nile added, leaving it ambiguous and enjoying the satisfaction of having the ex-CIA agent so visibly off-balance. Nicky had told her that only 20% of intimidation was proving that you had something on the other person. Another 20% was casual little reminders of that fact, and the remaining 60% was the mark's imagination as time and pressure increased. 

Nile had thought that Andy would be more interested in the wall with her history spread out on it, but she only took a brief glance before sitting in a chair. "Haven't gotten the stain out of the rug," she said. 

Joe was tracing his pieced-together timeline back through the decades. A few photographs, one Xerox of a passport with an old alias. The oldest point was a story from Kurdish oral history that, if he squinted, could have been an actual event with a lot of embellishment. He briefly looked at Quynh's timeline and then Andy's for a bit longer as Nile and Andy and Copley talked, but then he came to another panel with very few strings tying points together. Military briefs about incidents with different dates in different languages. Assassinations. Transcripts of eyewitnesses claiming that dead people revived. Sole survivors of shipwrecks, train, and plane crashes. Missing persons. Missing corpses. A cluster of incidents around a card saying "St. Petersburg Phantom.” Another three names with dates circled around "Lyon Knife." A map with a scattering of multicolored pins. 

Copley walked over and hovered a couple feet behind Joe. "Anything you recognize?" 

"Don't think so," Joe said, turning. "But where's your data on Loch Ness? Or Bigfoot?" 

"A lot of it is junk," Copley admitted, unashamed, "But sometimes new information emerges that makes a link. This knife, for example: used to kill one person in 1883, went missing and then found in the body of another man in 1887. It was then stolen from police evidence sometime before 1902 and then used again in another murder in 1930." 

"A haunted knife," Joe said. "Or are you implying that one of us has some sentimental attachment to a weapon that we leave at crime scenes but then miss so terribly that we keep taking it back only to leave it at another crime scene?" 

"Reliable records are not abundant until about fifty years ago," Copley said. "There could have been other murders done by the same knife that the science of forensics was too new to spot." 

"Even if we do have favorite objects," Andy said, "We're smart enough to switch things up. Leave things behind and get them back in a generation or two. You're never going to be able to see the world from the perspective of someone as old as any of us. Things look very different." 

"And we evolve with the times," Joe added, taking a seat on a sofa. "Now that there are abundant records of everything, as you say, we have changed the ways we do things. We've learned what not to leave behind. How to travel without documents. What evidence we need to erase and obscure," he finished, with lifted eyebrows. 

"And you're going to help us," Andy said. "When we leave a footprint in the sand, in the snow, in the ether, you’re going to sweep it. You’re going to protect us from those who want to put us in cages. And you’re gonna help us find those jobs that are best suited to us." 

"How do I know the others I haven't met have as good intentions as you do?" Copley said. 

"She's not asking," Joe said. 

* * *

There was a family meeting about Booker without Booker. Nick stood outside in the chilly evening and smoked with him as everyone else weighed in on the punishment. 

"I was stupid," Booker said. "I thought it would be me giving a blood sample. Then Copley said they needed at least another sample to compare and that more donors would be better. And I was like, 'set up an ambush, you'll get plenty of blood.' I thought I had the upper hand," he said, knocking a fist on the railing. "Didn't tell them we would slaughter their entire entire team." 

"And then Copley probably told you the blood at the kill site was contaminated, right?" 

Booker cut him an embarrassed look before turning away again. "...Yeah." 

Nick tried to word his thoughts so that they were set in a positive context instead of just slamming the man. "You've had your team practically since day one, right? They've had your back and cleaned up your mistakes, even when you were an asshole and tried to get them to leave." 

"How do you--" 

Nicky waved his hand to quiet him. "It's not hard to guess. You had a family, went through the process of losing your family, and so you probably went through a phase where you were too upset to accept that you had a new family that you might also lose." 

Booker bent over so he could prop his elbow on the rail and try to bury his face in his palm. "Andy," he sighed. 

"I think that is just a coincidence and unfortunate timing," Nicky said. "I don't see how that could be your fault. In fact, I really wonder how much control we have at all." 

"What do you mean?" 

"You managed to track me down. After two hundred years of being four immortal warriors, you find and pull in a fifth. And then, within the same week, in the middle of the events you caused that could have had even more disastrous consequences, Nile was made. Something bigger than us wanted to ruin the plans you and Copley and Merrick had made." 

There was a long moment of silence as Booker processed that. "Shit," he finally said. "That just makes everything seem worse. That I was fucking up so bad that, what, God needed to put a hand in making sure I didn't screw everything up?" 

"It's just speculation," Nicky said. "Maybe the universe has plans. I have no clue what they might be, but I think we're going to need to stick together, all six of us." 

"Yeah, well, thanks for trying to cheer me up, I guess. You're bad at it, though." 

Nick shrugged. "I'm not used to having friends, just temporary allies. You keep having these moping sessions and I'll get a lot more practice." 

Andy joined them in the dark. "One hundred years." 

"Worse than expected, but better than I feared," Booker said. 

Nicky turned to go back inside and knocked their shoulders together roughly as he passed Booker. "Don't go down without a fight, you miserable bastard." He went inside and sat on the couch practically on top of Joe and looked Quynh in the eye. He figured she was the angriest of all of them. "No banishment for Booker. You and Andy go on holiday, come to terms with things, whatever. But I think all of us are going to need to band together, and no telling when." He laid out what he had thought about while talking outside, and summed it up: "We came together for a reason. It might happen tomorrow, or five hundred years from now, but we should take all the time we can to be prepared. Share our skills, learn to fight together, strengthen our weaknesses. And if your condition doesn't change," he said bluntly, directly to Andy's face, "Then you have a limited amount of time to teach us. You are the only one who has led a group of us before, and you've seen even more shit than the rest of us." 

"There is no higher power," Andy said, almost scornfully. "There are only coincidences that we are compelled to assign meaning to." 

"Then what's the harm in preparing for the worst?" Nicky said. "All you'll lose is some emotional retribution against Booker." 

"Somewhat _satisfying_ emotional retribution," Quynh muttered. Booker shrunk in on himself a bit. Nick heartlessly drew attention to him with a gesture. 

"That isn't satisfying?" 

Quynh tilted her head. "Point." 

"This is a new world," Nick said. "If you boot Booker from your orbit that means you will have to rely only on Copley to do the technological work you need for money and travel and creating aliases. Can you trust him with all that? He could set you all up to be caught again so easily." 

Joe put a hand on Nicky's shoulder. "You wouldn't stay with us? With me?" 

"I would do my best," Nicky said. "And Nile will learn and also do her best. But Booker fucking _knows_ you guys, how you work. We shouldn't throw out any tool we have in our inventory." 

"He _is_ a tool," Joe muttered, looking sharply at Booker. Booker didn't lift his head to look back at him, but the corner of his mouth quirked in tired humor at the insult. 

"That does sound like good tactics," Nile said. "If my vote counts, I'd go for Nicky's option." 

"We aren't the ones he screwed over," Nicky said, unnecessarily reminding everyone that Andy, Quynh, and Joe could have all of their fates in their hands. 

* * *

Nick watched Booker watch the car drive off through the window. He couldn't think of anything to say to the man that wouldn't come off as condescending or snide. Andy and Quynh were leaving, and Booker was not allowed to make contact with them until they reached out to him. Andy still seemed to be mortal and Booker, as well as the rest of his team, blamed himself. 

"Thanks," Booker said unexpectedly. "You advocated for me even when I didn't deserve it. I'd have been banished from everyone if you hadn't stepped in." 

"Nile was in your corner, too." 

"Only because you were both too new for me to have plotted to betray you as well," Booker said. 

"I get it," Nicky said almost consolingly, "Though I didn't have people that I lost. Only myself. I snapped into madness one day and was overwhelmed with rage and grief that made me do stupid things for a long time." 

"Madness?" Booker turned away from the window. 

"I haven't told Joe yet," Nicky said, examining his hands like he could still see old blood embedded in his cuticles and under his fingernails. "But I was... untethered. Lost my faith in everything, let myself forget that the world was real. I was angry and empty. When I maybe was a handful of decades older than you are now, I cut a bloody swathe through Wallachia, Moldalvia, and parts of the Ottoman Empire. Killed Saxons, Turks, and Bulgarians without caring whether they were enemies or innocents. Not just killed; tortured." Nicky twisted his fingers together anxiously. "After that I tried to get myself exorcised several times, hoping that I had been possessed. But it had just been me. Then I punished myself for a long time." 

"Booker" wasn't just a pun on his French surname. He was well-read and did the math and Nicky saw his eyes go wide. 

"I was one of his generals, not the Impaler himself," Nicky said. "But he liked to take the credit when I went wild and enjoyed taking the reputation as his own. So I clearly have no moral high ground from which to condemn you. Hopefully I can help your recovery from this happen easier and quicker, though." 

Booker examined him, sighed, and shook his head. "Fuck, I wish I could have a drink." 

Nicky's smile was thin but not unsympathetic. "Getting drunk at best delays solving your problems but more often just makes them worse. Smoking, however, makes you wallow in your guilt and actually process it." He pulled out a new pack and tossed it to Booker, who stared at it and sighed. 

"I hate being a stereotype," he said in French, but he took Nicky's lighter as he walked past him to go sit in the tiny back garden. 

* * *

Joe came up to the bedroom where Nicky was sitting in bed with his laptop. "What's this about Nile calling you Dracula?" 

Nicky rolled his eyes. "Of course my dark and bloody past is watered down to stupid vampire jokes," he said, pretending to be dismayed but actually kind of pleased. As long as his new team (friends?) didn't take it as a reason to actually fear him. 

Joe obviously didn't because he toed off his shoes and collapsed onto the bed to curl up with his forehead against Nicky's hip. 

"Andy and Quynh got on the plane okay?" 

"Of course. I picked up some groceries on the way back. How long are you letting us stay?" 

"As long as it's safe," Nicky said. "Sometimes it's smarter to hide instead of fleeing the AO. Authorities expect you to try to get away after causing an incident. But Copley seems to have things locked down, and Merrick's corporation hasn't leaked anything to the cops." 

Joe blinked one brown eye up at him. "It sounds like you're part of the team." 

Nicky turned his eyes back to his screen. "I'm not leaving you and Booker to deal with each other without a referee that isn't a newly-resurrected immortal millennial. Not fair to any of you." 

"Nicolò do Genova: International Man of Mystery has fallen in status to Immortal Babysitter in a matter of weeks," Joe teased. 

"Yeah, baby, groovy" Nicky deadpanned, making Joe giggle so loudly that Nile climbed up the stairs to poke her head in. 

"What's so funny?" She asked. 

Nicky shrugged with a blank look. "No idea. I think he just spontaneously broke." 

Joe rolled onto his back and wiped his eyes. "I can't believe you quoted Austin Powers." 

"I take enough passenger flights to keep up with current culture. We don't all have hobbies in the fine arts to keep us busy." 

Nile noticed the way Joe's hand had started wandering on Nicky's thigh, made a face, and left. She made sure the bedroom door was shut firmly behind her. 

"I think that's permission," Joe said. 

"...Give me three minutes," Nicky said, typing. Joe took a look at the screen but it was all small text that he wasn't curious enough to read. He got himself up and headed to the bathroom, unbuttoning his trousers. 

"I'll give myself three _fingers,_ and then you'd better be ready to put that thing away and pay some attention to me," Joe said, pleased to hear Nicky fumble the laptop and swear. 

* * *

Nicky's relationship with Booker wasn't a one-way street. It turned out that Booker had a whole category of skills that Nicky had never bothered cultivating himself. 

"Wow," he said admiringly, thumbing through the pages of a red-covered _Diplomatenpass_ that claimed a photo of a clean-cut Booker was a trusted citizen of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. "You made this?" 

Booker shrugged modestly and opened a toolbox he had retrieved along with the passport from a bank vault. "Made it easier to get through the Iron Curtain. Useless now, of course." He set out a handful of little ink bottles whose contents were mostly dried, and then tested a rectangular stamp rubber's pliability with a thumbnail. "Most of this is useless. Outdated." He tossed the objects back into the box and started unwrapping a thick square of plastic. Lifting out the first layer of plain cardboard revealed a painting. Nicky didn't like it, but Nile made a sound of recognition. 

"Is that a fake Modigliani? Did you paint that?" She sounded equally impressed and horrified. 

"I'm not a painter," Booker said. "I had an agreement with Elmyr de Hory." He set the painting aside and unfolded some fragile sheets of paper. "I worked on the certificates of authenticity for several of his knock-offs. Got a good cut, too." 

Nile punched him in the arm. Booker shifted away from her and looked at her in surprise and irritation. "What?" 

"Ooh," she said, making a little stomp-dance of frustration that Nicky found adorable. "I'm so mad at you right now!" 

Booker didn't hide his smile. "Art only has the value and meaning we decide to give it. You can't consider it sacred." 

"It's history," Nile insisted. 

"Not from my perspective. Not from Nick's. We are more valuable sources of history than some illustrations from artists." 

"Why don't we agree to revisit this issue in another 200 years?" Nicky said blandly. "I want to know if you've kept your hand in the counterfeit game since the '60s." 

"I have more recent stashes," Booker said. 

Nile's hand crept out toward the Modigliani/Hory. "You won't mind if I burn this then? For my peace of mind?" 

Booker shrugged. "Go ahead. But I could have been bluffing. That could be an original with the real provenance that I bought to base my forgeries from. Either way, I don't care." 

Nile hesitated and Nicky couldn't stifle a smile. 

"You're a dick, Booker!" Nile growled before stomping off without the painting. 

The lines of stress and sadness on Booker's face had been smoothed out for the moment and replaced with wrinkles at the corners of his eyes as he smiled. He turned to Nicky and said, "It's really-" 

Nicky shook his head and met him grin for grin. "I don't want to know. Don't ruin this for me. ...What do you know about faking bills of lading?" 

* * *

Joe, Nile, Booker, and Nicky spent some time in Rio because Nile had never gone further south in the western hemisphere than Cabo. Nicky didn't have a place in Brazil but Booker did. 

Nile was a good student at hacking and tracking down connections via money trails and social media. Joe was decidedly not, and had very little interest in the analytical aspect of intelligence gathering. Instead, Nicky tried to teach him how to cultivate relationships over the internet for one disastrous week. 

"This is Samia," Nicky had said, showing Joe a Facebook profile. "Her husband is highly stationed in the new Algerian president's advisory panel. I want you to create a fake persona and get to know her." 

"I always liked the name Imane," Joe had replied, sliding the laptop onto his lap and then linking his fingers and stretching them as if he was going to be putting them through an extreme workout. 

Three days later Nicky had checked on Joe's progress. It looked like Joe's persona had gotten into a spectacular falling-out with Samia; their last exchanges had been rather... heated. 

"I told you that you should be sympathetic," Nicky reminded Joe, who was literally pouting on the other side of the couch. "I recommended that you avoid controversial topics and develop a rapport." 

"I tried!" Joe said. 

"Then what was this about?" Nicky asked, with a small hand wave toward the computer. 

"Samia always puts kidney beans in her fasolada," Joe said, literally throwing his hands up in disgust. " _Kidney beans!_ Those are _red_ , Nicky! She says she prefers the stronger taste, but the beans should be white to stand out against the red soup! It is traditional as well as aesthetically pleasing to the eye!" 

Nicky sighed. He reached out a hand to Joe and pulled him across the sofa. "I genuinely cannot tell if this is a real pet peeve or if you are just trying to get out of learning social engineering." 

"I'll social engineer _you_ ," Joe said flirtatiously and nonsensically as he batted his eyes at Nicky. It should have been ridiculous, but it wasn't. 

* * *

Andy and Quynh eventually rejoined them in Marrakech; Quynh's anger at Booker much cooled. Nile was excited to outline every detail of a job she and the three men had done to bury all hopes of the Chinese-led Nicaraguan Canal and Development Project. Andy humored her, asking questions Nicky was pretty sure she already knew the answers to just so she could watch Nile rave or brag as she detailed the answers. 

"It would be a complete ecological and anthropological _disaster_ , Andy! There are indigenous people's entire communities at risk, as well as the fresh water supply for most of Central America! They would just be more casualties in this economic war between the U.S. and China!" 

Nicky found Nile's enthusiasm rejuvenating, and he was sure the rest of them felt the same. Even besides the joy of Nile, Nicky was changed so much for the better for meeting the other immortals. He and Booker shared skills, and if there was some mild complaining between them about the state of the world or the patience needed to deal with living cheek-to-jowl with other human beings regardless of their affection for those individuals, then Nile and Joe were happy enough to just poke fun at the "grouchy old men." Nile was another avid student eager to learn skills from Nicky (she had refused to have anything to do with forgery in protest to Booker's lack of respect for "The Arts," but it was an inflated debate the two of them greatly enjoyed). And Joe was just... sappy and clingy and distracting and just completely and utterly amazing. Nile and Book had despaired that the honeymoon was never going to end, and it seemed that Quynh and Andy also shared that opinion. 

A little more over eight months since meeting Joe in Kolkata, Nicky started feeling the signs of preheat. It always began with an ache in his glands when they were touched. Nicky's heats had been regular for centuries: always occurring during late September/early October, but it was mid-July. Nicky had been expecting the possible change, though. Being with Joe now, for so long, was bound to shake up his body chemistry as well as it had everything else in his life. 

He considered his options. For once in his long life he could _stay_ , let it be simply a mere inconvenience instead of a prison sentence of solitary confinement. Nicky had four capable warriors to guard him even if he took Joe out of that number because of his other... responsibilities. (Nicky wasn't going through this alone when he finally, _miraculously,_ had his own non-douchey alpha.) But his heat could also be something that the two female alphas wouldn't want to deal with-- they would be sensitive to the pheromones, though Nicky knew that the most Andy and Quynh would do in response was to focus on each other even more intensely; neither of them had an interest in Nicky or fighting Joe over him when all their hormones would be going wild. And even Nile and Booker, as nose-blind as all modern humans, might prefer Nicky and Joe to go somewhere else to do their marathon fucking. 

Nicky approached Joe first. "So, my heat is approaching early." 

Joe was making lunch; nothing fancy, just a spread of flatbread and hummus and other fillings. The scents of basil and mint and lemon were sharp in Nicky's nose. Joe turned around and dusted off his hands while he searched Nicky's face, casual and calm. "How do you want us to handle it?" He asked, and of course Joe said "us" even though Nicky had been almost worried that the alpha would leave him to the decision-making. This time Nicky wasn't solely responsible for deciding what to do; he was _Nicky_ now, practically a different person than whom he had been eight months ago. Still, that tiny word of support made tension unclench in his chest. 

"Maybe we could stay here?" Nicky asked. "Only if everyone is good with that idea, of course." 

"We will talk to Andy and Quynh," Joe just said with a nod before he turned back to what he was doing. 

They did. It was all very calm and adult. Everyone agreed it would be alright, and Nile and Booker just needed some basic explanations, and that was it. No ordering of supplies or urgent traveling or caching of kinky paraphernalia needed. The master suite was cleared of weapons at Joe's request and bottles of water and wet wipes were stashed in the corner next to Joe's side of the bed. 

When Nicky felt slick starting he simply excused himself from the group and headed to the bedroom early. Joe burst in immediately, his eyes wide. "Is it time?!" 

His excitement made Nicky burst into laughter. "You're such a dork! Don't even pretend like we aren't fucking on the regular, because I have been present and involved every single time." 

Joe locked the door and prowled toward the bed, trying to pull off an air of dignity or mysterious sexiness or something. Nicky could admit to the sexiness, but whatever mystique Joe was going for with his face all skewed like that just looked silly. "This is totally different," Joe said. "I haven't knotted you since _England,_ and that was so long ago." 

"Of course this is all about your knot," Nicky teased. 

Joe dropped to his knees and tugged Nicky's legs from their crossed position so that he could spread his thighs and get his face close to Nicky's crotch. He just breathed in and out noisily for several moments and Nicky found it unexpectedly hot. Eventually he had to end the somewhat embarrassing display and he gently pushed Joe's head away. "It's just pheromones," he muttered. 

Joe's eyes were the blackest Nicky could recall seeing, his pupils dilated and his mouth slightly open. The dopamine rush had obviously already hit him. "You're mine, now," Joe said, and while that statement would have gotten Joe stabbed eight months ago, now that rough and lust-filled voice was familiar and loved and just gave Nicky a sense of completion. "And I'm yours, habibi. And there will be no violence or death this time. Right?" He crawled onto the bed and touched Nicky's cheek. 

Nicky nodded. There weren't any handcuffs here. Any of their friends would bring them food. Nicky could hear them faintly in other parts of the house, and had helped stash guns everywhere in case of a surprise invasion. The bedroom door locked, and the fact that it was flimsy and easily breakable didn't matter because there weren't any secrets to hide or vulnerabilities Nicky needed to protect from them. There was trust instead. 

Joe drew his attention back. "Remember the first time I lapped your slick from its source?" 

"Vaguely," Nicky said, pretending to be casual about it. Of course he remembered; the concept that someone would do that had been so foreign to him back then. Now Nicky knew how probing and opening up Joe's ass with his own lips and tongue felt and tasted and, most important and satisfying of all, made his lover writhe and groan. 

Joe nodded with the smuggest smile spread wide across his face. "I rocked your world. I always do. Don't lie." He pulled off his light jacket and then stripped off the T-shirt he had been wearing under it. "I want you to sit on my face and try to drown me with your nectar." 

" _Nectar,_ " Nicky repeated with a hitch of laughter and a roll of his eyes. "You and your ridiculous flowery language!" But he started eagerly divesting himself of his clothes despite his exasperated words. 

The alpha ate Nicky's ass with impressive stamina and thoroughness, making Nicky claw and bite at the bedsheets until he begged for Joe's dick. Several times. Loudly. It took Booker kicking the door and yelling at Joe to fuck him already and shut Nicky up for Joe to roll away onto his back and laugh. Nicky took the advantage and straddled him, finally getting Joe's cock where he needed it. 

"Contrary dickhead," Nicky said to Joe. 

The alpha just grinned unrepentantly. "At least we have progressed from stabbing to insults. Maybe after another handful of heats you will say something nice." 

"I say plenty of nice things to you, _amore mio._ " 

Joe's response was punctuated by a long moan as he was sheathed by Nicky's heat. "I will always be-- ooooh-- greedy for more sweet words." 

"Always greedy for everything," Nicky panted out, bracing his hands on his lover's chest. 

"Just you." The alpha's lips were wet and pink. He rolled his head back on the pillow as Nicky's grinding encouraged his knot to thicken. He hissed out some vulgarity or prayer in a language Nicky didn't know. 

Nicky could only huff out, " _Si,_ " half a second before he came from just feeling Joe's dick make a home inside of his body. 

After Joe had climaxed he used a finger to pull at Nicky's lower lip, smirking at him in contentment. "Am I not big enough?" 

"Not _close_ enough." 

His partner carefully rolled them so that he was covering Nicky's body, arched his torso, and put his lips to where his mate's heart beat through ribs and flesh. "Ah. You understand my eternal torment." 

" _Eternal,_ " Nick lightly scoffed. "It has been less than a year. I would expect an alpha as old as you to be well-satisfied with the frequency of sex we have after eight months together." 

"It is not the intimacy of the past that feels eternal," Joe corrects, "It is our future. I pray that we will spend it side-by-side, even as I shall constantly long to be more than physically connected to you at all times. If I could, I would cleave our souls together. Synchronize our bodies' rhythms and our minds' thoughts. For you are the most precious thing in this world to me, and to lose you would be to lose myself." 

Nicky had to turn his face away and wipe his eyes. "Hormones," he muttered, before scowling at Joe. "Stop looking so proud of yourself." 

"How could I be anything but proud of myself," Joe said. "I have managed to catch the infamous Phantom of St. Petersburg!" 

"You have no proof that was me," Nicky said, narrowing his eyes. It was difficult to hide his amusement at Joe mentioning one of his more colorful nicknames. 

Joe folded his arms and made himself comfortable. "A job that good? I admit that I wasn't very patient when you were trying to teach me some of your methods, but I do have the ability to Google unsolved mysteries and figure out if the jobs were clean enough to have been yours." 

Nicky supposed he could be considered a bad man for being so turned on by his partner's admiration for his wetwork skills, but he had already made peace with the fact that Joe handling a shotgun was quite possibly the hottest thing he had ever seen. He _was_ violence and death, had been those two things personified for centuries, but was only realizing since being with Joe that he could be other things, too. Like thoughtful and considerate towards other people now that Nicky _had_ other people. It was quite a nice thing to discover new facets of oneself after being an outsider for 900 years. For instance, Joe and Nile in particular found him funny. Nicky _enjoyed_ being funny. 

"So," he asked Joe, "Have you decided whether I was the one who shot JFK?" 

His question earned him a bubbling laugh from Joe. "Not your style. Though I am wondering about the Star Wars murders in the 1980s." 

Nicky shrugged. "No idea what that is." 

Joe raised his eyebrows. "Over 25 scientists working on a secretive missile defense system all killed in suspicious accidents? Still unsolved?" 

"No idea," Nick repeated, straight-faced. "But can we stop talking about my theoretical past?" 

Joe repositioned and lay his head next to Nicky's. One hand ran down the side of his omega lover's body. "We can talk about out future then. Where will you take me when we spend time together alone?" 

"Where haven't you been?" Nicky asked, bouncing his fingertips in Joe's springy hair. "We have both been alive to walk the earth for a long time." 

"Everything will seem new to as if to fresh eyes now that I have met you. Well-tread paths will be intriguing journeys with you by my side. Each familiar landmark will invoke both of our stories, and we will share them in whispers as intimate as this." 

Even when Joe was excruciatingly verbose, Nicky still found it more endearing than annoying. Still, that affection did not prevent him from giving him a (gentle) smack. "Are you so bent that you cannot provide straight answers to simple questions?" 

Joe pressed his grin into Nicky's shoulder and hummed his amusement. "I am extremely bent, _ya amar._ I am wrought iron forged into the queerest and most sinuous of shapes. But tell me of the most beautiful things you have seen, and I will let you know whether I have set eyes on that place." 

"Halong Bay. I have a flat outside of Cẩm Phả. Watching the way the limestone islands emerge from the mist like ghosts has given me goosebumps." 

"I would like to have some better memories of that country," Joe said. 

"The flamingos in Bolivia. The Laguna Colorada." Nicky can feel arousal beginning to build up in him again, though the feeling of Joe still semi-hard inside of him is mitigating most of the hunger for now. 

"I think I saw that on television. We should go," Joe said agreeably. 

"Ashkelon," Nicky said next after a pause. "I think I would like to return there." He holds still, barely breathing, waiting for Joe's reaction. The man props himself up but doesn't separate their lower halves to pull out. Nicky adds, a bit hesitantly, "I think I left a man who could not die at Ashkelon." 

To Nicky's relief, Joe looked curious instead of hurt or angry. "If I recall the story correctly, this man had killed you, first." 

"You do not recall it correctly, then," Nicky said. "I impaled him before he even laid a blow to me." 

Joe broadcasted his scepticism through his lips and eyebrows. "Is that how it happened? You remember the event so clearly?" He didn't bother to try to mask the humor in his voice. 

"Hmm," Nicky murmured teasingly, "Perhaps I am confused. There was a man with a sword. I had my sword. There was a clash and then death for both. I woke up and you were gone. You healed first, so that meant I killed _you_ first." 

Joe pulled away to sit back on his knees. Nicky could feel a veritable flood of fluid gush out of him and watched his partner watch the mess spill with rapt attention. There was a sense of possessive enjoyment on Joe's face, one of those asshole alpha traits that Nick had always found repulsive before, but that greedy and pleased expression just made Nicky feel delightfully dirty because this was _Joe._ Joe had disrupted Nicolò's life twice, reshaping it into something that he would had been unable to fathom before each shake-up. 

Joe's gaze on Nicky's intimate body parts made him tingle with renewed arousal, and his lover's wordless sound of appreciation fanned his interest into a burning need. 

"What if you were a little faster coming back to life?" Nicky said, inspired. He hoped that Joe would understand and pick up the thread of the fantasy. 

His alpha was a very intelligent man. Understanding lit his eyes, Joe winked, and then his face morphed into an unconvincing expression of rage. "What did you do to me, filthy Frank?" 

Nicky turned away to stifle a laugh. He felt giddy amusement at Joe playing along, even if it was such a bad performance. It was adorable, though he wanted more realism to sate this sudden primal desire in himself to be fucked and claimed like alphas and omegas used to do when the sounds of battle fields transitioned from clashing metal and the struggles for life and victory to growls and grunts as surviving warriors fucked off the hormone high. When Nicky looked again at Joe he tried to reconcile this affectionate man with the hazy memory of the Muslim heathen that had killed him for the first time. 

"What did you do to _me?_ " Nicolò repeated. His hand itched for a knife; this alpha stank of pheromones and Nicolò's body responded so eagerly that he didn't know whether he would use that blade on himself or the infidel. Disgust and want coiled and fought inside of him. Nicolò wasn't going to give in so easily. He threw the alpha off of him and tried to wrestle the man into submission. 

Yusuf let Nicolò capture his wrists and try to pin them against the ground and focused his concentration on using his legs, levering the omega's thighs open and keeping them that way so that he could tease his cock against his and encourage the slick to continue pulsing from his hole. "If we are not meant to kill each other," Yusuf grunted between heaving breaths, "Maybe we are meant to mate." He wanted to see this pale-eyed omega impaled on his knot and moaning in bliss, and the best way to tame a feral omega was to incite him to irrational and incoherent anger. That is when an omega becomes a creature controlled by his need. At least, that is what the other alphas have told Yusuf after they clicked their tongues at his recollections of wooing both female and male omegas. Before meeting this individual Yusuf had always longed for soft and kind couplings; now Yusuf likes the notion of fucking this man into reluctant and pliant ecstasy. 

Nicolò snapped his teeth at Yusuf's face, making the bearded man recoil and grin. "Someone should teach you some manners," he taunts, and Yusuf begins to fight with a clear objective of getting the omega face-down underneath him. Yusuf's dick is leaking with excitement, and he can smell the salty-sweet slick smearing the ground and the omega's own body. 

The fight makes their blood race. Yusuf licks the tender gland on the right side of Nicolò's neck, making the man keen out a breathy, involuntary whine. The scent of each other lights up primordial parts of their brains, and Nicolò's wide-pupiled eyes half-close as Yusuf finally rolls him to his knees. He holds the omega by his hips and ducks his head to take a sip of the slick that already tastes like a mixture of them both. 

When Yusuf gets his cock into position Nicolò arches and sighs, his body so warm and wet and welcoming. "Ah, Joe." Joe can feel his partner convulse and come with his dick untouched. 

"Nicolò," Joe says, letting the lovely vowel sounds roll in his mouth. "Would you have known? Understood we were meant to be? If I had lingered to witness the second miracle, of you opening your eyes and healing. If our eyes had met again with the realization that we were both different and had become the same? Allah meant us to be more than enemies." 

_"'God has divided Man into three types,'"_ Nicky murmured hazily. _"'Two have been gifted with Divine Passions and shall take up arms to defend the Peace-Loving. Their Ferocity shall be mitigated with Compassion, and their Rage tempered with a Holy Love. The Alpha and the Omega shall begin every battle with Violence and end every war with Lust, forging bonds of Brotherhood with the willing meeting of Flesh.'"_ He huffed out a laugh, the pleasure almost but not quite drowning out the edge of cynicism. "I would have turned my back on everything my homeland had distilled in me. I would have followed you with a glaze of adoration in my eyes and stumbled after you through the desert. I was a romantic soul, back then. Young." 

Joe folded himself against Nicky's body, turning them comfortably onto their sides before he resumed a more sedate and luxuriant thrusting of his growing knot through the fluttering rim of Nicky's entrance. He nuzzled against his omega's neck and pressed a smile and then a kiss there. "We were both young," he agreed. "We are both quite different now. Whatever story we could have written together as enemies-turned-soulmates from the Crusades doesn't matter. This is the one we have now, _hayati,_ and I find myself riveted by the plot and desperate to know what happens next." 

Joe's cock had finally gotten too large to pull out and Nicky clenched around it, shuddering in satisfaction as everything in his brain and body lit up with feelings of wholeness and safety and a calm, quiet joy. He had an alpha lover who nestled so gently against all of his jagged edges and soothed the loneliness, uncertainty, and constant fear and anxiety that had been Nicolò's companions for almost a thousand years. He had a team, almost a family, of people like him: warriors, out-of-time and immortal, floundering in a constantly changing world and trying to find _why_ they were different. Less than a year ago, Nick had been bitter and jaded; hating his biology and his perpetual life sentence. Getting sloppy enough for Booker to track him down and Joe to idiotically lock them in Nick's heat room had been the best thing to happen to him in such a long time. 

Joe's arms cuddled him even closer. "Nicky?" He said, half cautious inquiry and half tender chastisement. "My love, is everything alright?" 

"It is," Nicky said, content to let the tears just fall. "Pretty much perfect."


End file.
